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A polaroid is a portrait you don’t need to paint, Bloom explained as she gifted the caribbean blue polaroid camera to Nessa. Every box of film is thirty memories in potentia, thirty experiences to capture.
Thirty times you can mark something important to you. Nessa immediately knew what the first five were for: Tigs in the kitchen, Glint and Henri playing the SNES on the theater stage with an open pizza box between them, James and Ophelia playing poker with Bloom, Bethany and Nhil painting on a wall and laughing.
Each marked with dates, names, notes. Retroverse Summer 2009 - Tiggy, you better not make Perfection Salad!!, City of Isona @ Henny’s theater 2009 - Henri has learned to cheat at Mortal Kombat and Glint hasn’t learned how to stop him, Theater 2009 - James won this hand but Ophelia has the next also I think Bloom’s gonna set him on fire with her mind, Theater 2009 - Nhilly and Bethy are decorating.
The next, the camera came with her to the Feywild - five more dates, names, notes. Feywild, Winter Court 2009 - Dad likes my polaroids, I think, Feywild, Winter Court 2009 - Gloxinia looks so pretty when she’s reading by the fire, Feywild, Winter Court 2009 - Qiqi always looks so serious!
Five more memories, five more dates. Material Plane 2009 - Glimmy’s on a date, oooooh, Material Plane 2009 - THIS PLACE IS CALLED CANDLEKEEP APPARENTLY, Candlekeep 2009 - slumber party in the library where we squished a spooky shadow, City of Obsidian 2009 - the house always wins unless the house is playing against Ti’gehlia, Palace Castardieu 2010 - hap new year (henri got a smorch and i got a tequila!), Palace Castardieu Jan 1rst 2010 - no more tequila ever again.
The last five pictures, however, told a very different set of stories.
Sword Coast 2010 - shmellows and smiles
“You’ve never had SMORES before?!”
She raises her camera and snaps a shot of Glint’s confused face mid-bite of a marshmallow, laughing as the firelight twinkles on the golden flecks across their cheeks like sparks. “Never ever. Are they that tasty?”
“God, that might be the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. Yes. Absolutely. Like– c’mere, let me show you,” they rustle in the bag and stab a marshmallow, scooting over to fold a warm hand over hers and hold her stick to the fire. “Smores are one of the little bonuses of being an outdoorsy type. And they always taste better with friends, so really this is the best possible time to make ‘em.”
Their hand is almost as warm as her favorite pair of winter gloves. Nessa finds herself snuggling closer, the warm of their hand blooming in her stomach like a pretty flower. She imagines it glittering there, kindled by touch and their laughter.
“--and don’t let Henri say they can be microwaved, that’s a crime. Tigs gets close with the broiler in the over but only just. Over a campfire with friends is the way to do it,” Glint says with such finality that Nessa finds herself nodding in agreement.
Maybe she just likes them talking.
Retroverse 2010 - star light, star bright, first star i see glinting tonight
Glint has gotten to be rather adept at these midnight walks, finding the gaps between city and sky where you still see stars. Nessa’s become adept at following them on these jaunts, her feet slowly finding easier purchase among roots and rocks.
Not that this keeps her from stumbling with a yelp when her ankle refuses to let her continue and twists indelicately, sending her into her fiery guide’s arms. Nessa tries not to giggle out of nerves and as she looks up to catch Glint’s eyes, she pauses.
Now, Nessa has seen stars before. She’s seen them a lot less since getting so attached to Isona, but she has seen them. She’s seen the sun before too, let herself be blinded by it.
She’s never seen stars reflected in Glint’s eyes, though, and her breath is briefly stolen by how pretty the stars look there: glittering silver against their gentle hearth-fire gold.
They raise an eyebrow at her awed expression and bubbly, nervous laughter as she thanks them and lets them go to keep leading her, but it doesn’t miss her notice that they’re holding her hand to keep her from stumbling as they go. The path Glint picks is a little long, but the expanse mapped before them: nebulas and the eyes of gods long lost swirling in the sky, Nessa finds even she feels small.
She thinks that’s pretty impressive, given she’s 6 feet tall.
She goes to say something to Glint but they’re already up the tree, settled on a sturdy limb, their tail dangling low to light the way to the trunk for Nessa to climb. She’s had enough of tripping for one day, though, and settles against the trunk to watch the stars.
It reminds her of Ophelia, those gentle stars.
She turns with her polaroid ready to capture the sky, but changes her angle to make sure she remembers she wasn’t there alone.
Click, print. The glow of Glint’s eyes is almost ominous, but even as they’re asking her what the flash was for they’re swinging off the branch to look at her latest captured memory.
The endless sea of stars, and the sun that came to the Retroverse to glow alongside them.
Henri’s Theater 2010, kitchen - tiggy you’re supposed to decorate the cupcakes, not glint!!
Tigs has been marathon stress-baking for hours - or at least, that’s what the kitchen looks like. The reality is that Tigs and Glint were marathoning
The Great Isona Bake-Off
and now Tigs is convinced he can do better than the winning baker.
The kitchen is an obstacle course of colored batter, eggshells, and poppy, funky music provided by Henri. Nessa has helpfully elected herself the chief spoon-licker and thus has seated herself by the counter to watch Tigs swear a blue streak at buttercream while Glint tests the latest batch. Pistachio, she thinks. It’s green and the last time she asked for a lime cupcake Tigs threatened to fistfight Corruption.
That was also the last time Tigs was left alone with a case of Java Monster and no supervision. Apparently he chased it with Deathwish Coffee.
She hums to herself, looking over the counter in time for Tigs to yell a defiant fuck at the ceiling as Glint laughs, loading the result into piping bags.
“Having fun?” Glint jokes as Tigs leans on the counter.
“The bottom half of this buttercream is as white as tofu - specifically the food, not the warlock - and if I mix it any further, I’ll split it. I’m going insane.” Tigs gently pounded his head against the counter with a groan. “Glint, I want it on my tombstone that my last words were fuck buttercream. Tofu!”
“Mm?” Tofu looked up from her spoon.
“You are going to record an MP3 of my last words. And my gravestone will play them.”
She shot him a thumbs up, and they went back to filling piping bags.
Tigs ultimately salvaged the buttercream by filing the piping bag half and half vertically to create a white-and-orange swirl effect that honestly looked rather pretty. Glint had been assigned the cotton candy cupcakes in pink, and given blue icing to frost them on.
The blue looks more like teal, she realizes, her blue. It makes her giggle a little, seeing her color next to the red of their hands.
…Their hands, warm and trusting, good for a scared warlock to hold onto when the shadows were more crawly than usual or the rotted wood of her heart cracked in a new, equally painful way. She loved their hands, she thought, each little nick was just a road on a new journey.
She loved their laughter just as much, ringing through the whole kitchen like a bell as Tigs splorts their cheek with the remaining orange and white frosting. They laugh and laugh, holding onto the edge of the counter for support, eyes closed and their golden hair falling over their right eye like a waterfall.
Another memory to preserve. She lifts her Polaroid with a decisive shutter click.
(Then before she can be frosted, she sets it down nearby and grabs a red piping bag to attack Glint too.)
( You’re the Princess of Frosting now, Glint grints as they smear their red into her cheek and she boops their nose with her teal.)
Henri’s Theater 2010 - nhilly vanilly and glinty are back from shopping
“I don’t know where her gummi bears go and at this point I’m scared to ask,” she hears them say and she bounds out of the stage to hurry into a welcome home snuggle.
“In her pocket - or under her desk. If you don’t touch the citrus ones she won’t notice,” an elegant voice laughs. That’s Nhil, she knows, and she beams as she scoops her camera up to come with her. Nhil will have her cloak, so the flash won’t hurt.
Glint spots her out of the corner of their eye and gives Nhil a quick nudge, who smiles a little and tugs her hood over her eyes with a laugh.
“Cheese,” she deadpans, and Nessa nearly falls over from laughing even as she takes the photo. She settles on the floor, giggling wildly as Nhil lowers her hood.
“You really like that thing, huh? Bloom really did pick out the perfect gift for you,” Nhil says as she sits down by Nessa to hang out (and discreetly steal from the gummi pocket, an event Nessa either never notices or is pretending not to).
Glint settles down next to them both, tail waving prettily in the afternoon sun. “It’s even the perfect color for you. Bright blues always suited you,” they hum, and Nessa’s cheeks promptly turn as red as their skin.
“Th-thanks,” she says dumbly, because words are suddenly hard to find and she’s trying to swallow her tongue before she speaks words far MORE dumb. Words like reds suit you because you burn so brightly, or words like you remind me of the sun in your reds and golds.
Instead, her mouth finds “I think you’re made of gold, starting with your heart” and frankly if the Theater could just open up a nice little hole to hell and drop her that would be GREAT.
But then they laugh, and she smiles and forgets all of that because the way their cheeks dimple is unforgivably cute. Nhil looks between them for a moment, and gives Glint a playful push toward Nessa before saying she’s going to see what Bloom’s working on.
The theater foyer is quiet, but it’s a comfortable quiet she can relax into rather than be wary in.
Glint seems to make the quiet comfortable in their own way. Maybe it’s like when a rabbit sees their friend laying down and knows the world is safe, she also sees them relaxed and comfy and it makes her feel the same.
It’s so comfortable in fact that after a few minutes of it, she tucks her head on their shoulder and starts dozing off.
My Room @ Henri’s, 2010 Midnight - they said i was a memory worth keeping
“Hey, Nes.”
“Yo?”
“How many pictures have you taken on that roll of film you got from Bloom?”
“Twenty-nine,” Nessa chirrups from in front of her Playstation 1 and a game of Tetris she refuses to concede. “There were so many memories in the past few months! I had to document them.”
“Document, huh,” Glint murmurs from her bed, sorting through her Polaroids. “That tracks. You’re the one who throws tantrums if someone’s not commenting their code.”
“That is because you Defraggers do not have the good sense god gave a goose and do not comment your reports. What if you need to make a change to something because you inserted a fireball and then you start sneezing swans?!”
Glint is, as ever, exceedingly patient. “That is not in any way how any of that works.”
“It is in my heart,” and Nessa is exceedingly herself, so Glint goes back to looking through the Polaroids.
“So if you took 29, you have one photo left. What’re you going to use it on?” Glint gathers all of the photos then tap-taps them against their thigh.
“Haven’t dec– dammit, why does this bastard game only give me the squares?!-- ahem. Haven’t decided yet. I wanna save it for a really good memory.” Nessa pauses her game and turns to face them. “Maybe next time we go somewhere. I’ll take a picture of you!”
“Hm, maybe… actually.” Glint took a moment to set the polaroids down beside her camera. “I never expected you to get so into photography. What got you so pumped about it? Like, you’re usually all happy and bouncy, but I’ve never seen you smile so much as you did after the camera.”
Glint seems to have a realization as soon as it comes out of their mouth once she gets that mournful smile she always does before disclosing some horrific aspect of “the time before the nap”. “Oh no.”
“Don’t worry, it’s not all that sad this time.”
“Nessa, gumdrop, bluebell love of my life. It is never not sad when the Burroughs are involved.”
“It isn’t, promise!” Nessa’s expression shifts, laughing as she gently swats at them. “It’s actually just a matter of practicalities versus my inability to sit still. I was born over a hundred years ago, remember?”
“So was I,” Glint adds warily.
She just beams and picks up her Polaroid. “Well, then you know back then we only had portraits. I never was good at sitting still,” she softly laughs - but the smile on her face doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “But there was one I sat for. I think my mom was still alive then, because Lissa was in it, and I remember Darcy being there and I remember a hand on my head so that must’ve been mom. Darcy didn’t really interact with me much, y’know?”
“So I guess that’s why I take so many photos. Portraits back then were just to commemorate important memories - weddings, the head changing, deaths sometimes. And all of my memories now are important enough that I’d want a portrait painted, but Polaroids print instantly! So I can instantly keep every memory I have.” Nessa concludes her explanation by staring at her camera with a soft, secret smile. “I can make all of my memories of you immortal.”
“That makes sense, but…”
“But?” Nessa looks up as Glint trails off, blinking.
“There’s none of you in here. Even this one–” They draw the first 2010 photo from the group, showing her facedown in a bed at the Castardieu Palace, mostly blocked from view by Henri grinning and talking her through a hangover. “You didn’t take this one, Tigs did and if he didn’t we wouldn’t have it. You never take photos of yourself.”
…She holds her breath for a moment and strains herself to smile. Ah, the point of no return, we meet again. “I don’t need to be in the pictures. I was there. I was part of them. That warmth is engraved in my memories even if I’m not in the pictures!”
“Nessa–”
“I don’t need to be in them because I live in them,” she hurries in that same tone she always does when the thoughts are too much to keep inside her skull - when she’s desperate to make herself believe what she’s saying, too. “I live in them and look at the photos to go back to them, so–”
“Nessa, what if the memory I want to keep is you ?”
The firmness of their tone gets Nessa to stop midway through her spiral and her expression shifts from the strained smile to a dropped jaw.
Glint frowns softly and grabs her hand, and it feels like her hand’s on fire too. “You say you live in these memories but there’s no sign of you existing in them. You put yourself on the outside and decided for yourself that we don’t want to keep these memories with you in them, didn’t you?”
The silence is damning, she supposes as she looks down. “...I know it isn’t true,” she admits after a moment. “You all love me more than Darcy ever did. I believe that in my heart of hearts, I really do, but…”
“...but if these photos are your analogue for portraits, and you never showed up in any…” Glint continues the thread of her thoughts and softens. “You just love us more than you love you.”
Before she can open her mouth to self deprecate and spiral, Glint plants a fingertip on her mouth. “Hand me the camera for a sec, and come over here.”
She wordlessly complies because frankly, she’s too stunned to do anything else at this point. Nessa cozies up to their side as they search the camera and then–
“Aha. Self timer.” Glint beams and turns back to her as they fiddle with it. “Okay, listen to me for a sec. You know I’m a druid, right?”
“What does that have to– OH.”
“Right. Druids have a really long lifespan. Nhil an’ I are probably gonna outlive all of you,” they say softly - reaching up to put a hand on her cheek. “Which is gonna suck, I already hate not seeing you when you go back to the Feywild, but knowing I’m not gonna see you ever again one day is the WORST.”
“B-but you’ll have our memories still!” Nessa tries to protest, tries not to lean into their hand. She fails on both accounts.
“Sure, and I’ll probably have your photos too. But they’re all photos of everyone except you. I’ll have memories of me, of Nhil, Henri, Tigs, Bloom and James and Beth – but there’s not gonna be any documentation of you and how much I care about you too.”
“You love all of us so much - and we love you. So that’s why I’m asking you to take more photos with you in them! Document that you existed, document the memories you are part of too. Because someday, that’s all I’m gonna have.”
“Your photos, and our memories.” Glint concludes as they finish setting up the camera. “Fifteen seconds. So. Promise?”
They grin, and it feels like there’s stars and sparks in her hands and eyes and belly, pretty and light and it must be the sparks she always catches in their eyes they’re so bright so bright–
“Yeah, promise,” she says with a shy giggle and a grin - a grin that is promptly kissed off her face as the self timer goes off on her 30th photo: a handsome red rai grinning against the lips of a woman with road-home brown hair, kissing them back with a smile and little tears at the corners of her eyes.
Nessa’s collection of polaroids only grew over the years after that - memory after memory, captured in color bordered by white.
Retroverse 2012 - TIGGY HIT ME IN THE FACE WITH THE BOUQUET
Feywild 2010 - glint and i went to see grandmother summer and she likes them
Henri’s Theater, 2017 - meet sprouts, fambly
City of Isona, 2013 - Expression smiles so much more nowadays!
Feywild, Winter Court, 2013 - I HIT TIGS WITH THE BOUQUET THIS TIME (she gave it to nhil)
Henri’s Theater, 2020 - SPROUTS VERSUS CUPCAKE BATTER VERSUS MOM
Henri’s Theater, 2020, 10 minutes later - baba wins the cupcake war and the spoon
Retroverse, City of Isona 2014 - Ry looks so pretty and if Ray doesn’t ask her tonight I’m kicking his ass
Code’s Cathedral/The New Magic School, 2011 - hi ophie. we miss you
City of Obsidian 2012 - Tiggy does his eyebrows better than I do :(
Retroverse, City of Isona 2014 - I DO NOT HAVE TO KICK RAY’S ASS!!
Feywild, Winter Court 2014 - oh god i’m an archfey now
So many polaroids that came across so many different travels, so many different memories captured forever for a girl who once thought herself so unimportant she didn’t need to be in any. And now…
“Hey, mom! What’s this old box?”
“Oh wow, you found my old Polaroid! Gosh, I have so many memories with this thing. I didn’t get to use it as much once magical photos started getting popular…”
“Is this one you and baba?! Shit, you look so young…”
…Maybe there were some new memories she needed to pass on.
“That one’s always been my favorite. You know, you’re the same color as this camera, Shimmer.”
“I’m a Frost Rai. What other color could I be, ourple ?”
“Very funny. My point is, if I can find more film… how about I let you, Shine and Primavera take over photo duty?”
“You’d just let us have this? Seriously?”
“Yeah! I used it to capture my memories. Now my fondest memories can capture memories of their own.”
“Auuuugh, don’t be so sappy!! My eyeliner’s gonna run!”
From all her loved yesterdays, to her beloved today.
“--and that’s a self timer. Now get out there and capture 30 memories for us!”
"You got it, ma. Yo, Shine, Primavera, c'mon! We gotta hit up Uncle Hen's place for those melon ice creams before my gig tonight an' I got photos to take!"
To all their future memories.