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Branch turns the light on to get a better look at the card, thumb brushing over the letters of his name.
One time, a few years ago, when Branch was still within earshot, he heard somebody ask Poppy what he'd been wondering for a while.
"Why do you keep asking him to hang out when he says no every time? He isn't gonna budge."
He didn't quite catch her response, but whatever it was, it was clear to him she wasn't dissuaded, because she didn't budge either. She never did.
At the start, and for a while after that, her efforts felt the same as all the rest. She was maybe more cheerful than most who tried in vain to pry him from his shell, but other than that, nothing special. There had been lots like her, especially when he was younger. The attempts to change his mind were nice at first, but they just kept coming, pestering him about going to parties or trying fun games or making friends.
To his relief, the number of people to do that dwindled as the years went on. It was no longer an everyday thing from his peers or from the orphanage caretakers or from half the adults he'd come across going about his day. The most incessant of them got worn down eventually, and so, by the time he was sixteen, the only living Troll going out of her way to give him grief was Princess Poppy.
Poppy kept the invites coming over the next three years. It was at the age of nineteen that the public opinion of him shifted.
Before then, it was mostly pity. Who wouldn't feel bad for the little grey Troll. He must have been through something terrible, after all, because he never seemed to get over what he'd gone through in the Troll Tree. He wasn't the only Troll to be grey at the time of their escape, but all the others had gone on to heal enough to gain their colours back eventually. By the fifth anniversary, it was just him left, and oh, how sorry a sight he was to all the grown ups with droopy ears and hands on their hearts saying some variation of, "poor little guy," every other time he walked by. It was like that for a long while, all the way through his teens.
And the he was nineteen. In another panic, not his first and not his last, he may have ran screaming into a funeral, and he may have shoved the occupied coffin onto it's side, and he may have been feeling too on-edge and too defensive to want to apologize at the time. Word spread, as it always did when it came to him, and it seemed like overnight, they were all just as irritated with him as he'd been with them for years. He'd traded pity for passive aggression. Branch decided he was glad, because he thought it meant an end to the pestering, at least.
But no, apparently not. He couldn't even have that much. Princess Poppy decided to keep at him anyway. She always did. Somehow, even after nine whole years of being turned down again and again and again, she'd be back, running up to greet him the very next time she'd see him making his way through town, with yet another pitch, and yet another card advertising yet another function he couldn't care less about.
He hated it... Or, at least he knows he used to.
He's not sure he can make that claim anymore.
Not when he's been staring at the latest party invite in his hand for the better part of an hour, lost in thought, because she'd gone through the trouble of customizing this one. He had seen the others she'd been handing out that day, just like the ones she'd given him hundreds of times before. They were generic, made by her hands for a dozen events a month, her own signature design. She would make a lot of them. He would trash the ones she gave him the moment he got home. But she'd never personalized his before. Only his.
He eyes the fun design, glittery letters spelling out, "Branch, you're invited to Princess Poppy's Picnic Party." He examines the little pop up of himself, with a big smile drawn on his face, standing beside a little Princess Poppy offering his depiction a little picnic party hat.
After a while, he's sure. He can't claim to hate the card. He can't claim to hate that she gave it to him. Not anymore. He admits it to himself, quietly, determined to never let her know it. He picks a spot on his shelf with a curtain to keep it out of sight. He goes about his day.
And he goes about all the days thereafter.
Every once in a while, he allows himself to think about it. He isn't quite sure how the same consistent effort that drove him up a wall for years and years and years had come full circle, looping back around to become something he appreciates. He mulls it over, face flushed and stomach fluttering, staring at the ceiling on another night where he can't sleep. No dice, he can't place why.
More than once, Branch has had dreams about saying yes, going to some party, and spending the night smiling big at Poppy's side. He'd wake up aching.
If doing so was safe, if she wasn't gleefully trying to coax him into the open, asking him to paint a target on his back, he might have caved and been her friend.
But he would like to live, and so, he decides it's always going to be a no from him.