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Riri had expected the noise before she expected the scale of it.
The convention centre had been audible half a block away, not as music or announcement but as the pressure of several thousand people occupying the same appetite at once. Inside, the sound changed every few yards. Near the entrance it was scanners chirping, volunteers calling people toward open lines, the scrape of barriers against polished concrete. Farther in came the higher, stranger weather of the exhibition floor: bursts of laughter, amplified voices from a stage she could not yet see, children shouting at characters they recognized, the metallic clatter of something deliberately made to sound heavier than it was. Riri moved through it without hurry, a broad dark shape among capes, armour, elaborate wigs and backpacks swollen with purchases. Her convention pass knocked softly against the middle of her chest. She had already folded the programme once and put it into the back pocket of her jeans because she disliked carrying paper when she could avoid it.
She had come for Sonja. That was true enough. The retrospective had been the detail that settled the trip when she saw the programme: original pages, old covers, costumes, design work, a panel about movement and weaponry, another about the character’s publishing life. Riri’s comics reading had never broadened much. She had tried, in stretches, because women she liked handed her books and because players on her teams had opinions they expected her to understand, but no general devotion followed. She could enjoy a story and put it down. She could admire an artist and forget to learn the name. Sonja was different. Sonja had remained when almost everything else had come and gone, as fixed in Riri’s private visual vocabulary as rink boards, cedar shavings, a sharpened skate edge and the faint crescent marks left by a well-used hammer.
The unexpected pleasure of the morning was not the comics at all. It was the making.
Riri slowed beside a woman in armour whose scale skirt had no visible fastening. The woman was speaking to two teenagers about resin casting and did not notice Riri studying the construction until one of the teenagers moved aside. Riri saw then that the scales were attached in overlapping rows to flexible backing, the weight distributed by a hidden belt under the upper plates. It was smart. She said so. The woman lit up and showed her the inside. Ten minutes later Riri was walking again with a better understanding of thermoplastics than she had possessed before breakfast.
A man carrying a hammer nearly as tall as he was passed her with it resting easily over one shoulder. Riri watched the head bounce, saw how little his centre of gravity changed and knew it was hollow before she saw the seam. A woman dressed as some horned queen had built a spine of articulated pieces down the back of her costume, each one rising and settling as she walked. A child in a blue cape stood beside a parent with the utter self-possession of royalty, one hand gripping a foam sword, face solemn beneath a crooked plastic crown. Riri liked the children best. Adults often knew that transformation was partly performance. Children frequently did not see the distinction. For six hours or one photograph or the space between two booths, they were what they had become.
She never once wanted a costume of her own.
Her black and blue flannel had been comfortable when she left the hotel and remained comfortable now with the sleeves pushed to her forearms. The fitted dark T-shirt beneath it was beginning to warm between her shoulder blades, but not enough to make her take the flannel off. Her jeans had room to move. Her boots were broken in. Her buzzcut had required no thought after the shower. She was perfectly content to be herself beside the impossible things.
She wandered without any sense of being lost. At forty-two, Riri no longer cared whether her face declared sufficient knowledge in unfamiliar rooms. If she did not understand something, she looked. If looking did not solve it, she asked. That habit had improved most parts of her life. It was useful in workshops, dressing rooms, community meetings, strange cities and, apparently, comic conventions.
She noticed Jenny because a little girl asked for a photograph.
Riri had been moving toward an aisle where a hand-painted banner promised vintage books when she saw the child stop so abruptly that her mother nearly collided with her. The girl could not have been more than seven. She stared through a gap in the crowd and whispered something with such urgency that her mother immediately followed her gaze.
Riri followed it too.
Red hair rose above silver scale armour in a thick, carefully roughened fall. The sword came first to Riri’s eye after that, because swords always did. It was convention-safe, obviously light enough for a day of carrying, but whoever had made or chosen it understood proportion. It had the breadth and length to look like an object intended to cut rather than an elongated ornament. The woman holding it was tiny. Not merely short beside Riri, which described much of the population, but genuinely small, the top of that red head scarcely high enough to reach Riri’s sternum if they stood together. The costume did not apologize for the fact. The boots did not hide platforms. The stance did not attempt an illusion. The sword rested against one shoulder while the woman listened to the child’s mother, then her whole face opened.
Riri stopped.
The face was wrong for the easiest version of the costume. It was sweet. Not vacant, not coy, not arranged into a permanent warrior scowl. Sweet in a way Riri did not often see survive a room full of cameras: clear eyes, a generous mouth, attention that seemed to settle wholly on whoever stood in front of her. She crouched enough to bring herself nearer the little girl’s height without making a production of it. The child held up her own foam blade. The woman admired it with complete seriousness. Then, for the photograph, she rose, planted the sword point-down beside her boot and took on Sonja in the small adjustment of her shoulders and the angle of her chin.
The mother took two pictures. The child asked something. The woman answered, smiling. Another person approached for a photograph. She gave that one with the same energy. When the camera lowered, she looked at the other person’s costume and asked about a piece of beadwork on the collar. The conversation turned. She was no longer performing herself being admired. She was curious.
That held Riri longer than the scale armour.
The scale armour was very good.
At a distance, Riri could see that it had been built to move. The rows flexed when the woman shifted. The belt sat properly rather than hanging as an afterthought. The bracers had been weathered at the edges instead of uniformly dirtied. The boots looked sturdy enough to cross the entire building several times without bloodshed. The red hair was not simply a bright wig dropped onto a head; sections had been worked loose and coarse so that it had the wind-touched density of illustrated hair without becoming ridiculous. There were small imperfections deliberately introduced everywhere. Nothing looked freshly unpacked.
Riri realized she had been standing still for almost a minute.
A pair of young women in matching jackets squeezed past her. She moved aside, continued toward the vintage aisle and did not look back immediately.
She looked back at the next intersection.
The small Sonja was listening to a woman in green armour now, touching two fingers lightly to the woman’s shoulder piece while the maker explained something about its hinge. She nodded, absorbed.
Riri smiled to herself and moved on.
Jenny had noticed Riri before Riri looked away the first time.
Not because she was being watched. Jenny had spent enough convention hours in a Sonja costume to know the difference between attention and staring, and the large woman near the aisle had not made her skin tighten. There had been no furtive sweep down her body, no smirk shared with a friend, no phone half-raised in the hope of stealing a photograph. The woman had looked first at the sword.
Jenny had nearly laughed from delight.
She did not, because the little girl in front of her was explaining that her own sword came from a cartoon Jenny had not seen. Jenny gave the explanation its proper place. She asked which character carried it. She admired the blue gem glued to the hilt. When the photograph was finished and the child’s mother thanked her, Jenny watched them go and allowed herself one glance toward the aisle.
The tall woman was still there.
Tall was inadequate. Jenny had spent enough of her life among women much taller than herself that height alone rarely startled her, but this woman carried size in more than the distance between floor and crown. Her shoulders filled the flannel. Her forearms were thick without softness, marked by the kind of use that did not need a gym mirror to announce itself. She stood with one hip slightly relaxed, feet placed as though she had never once wondered whether her body had permission to take up its exact amount of space. Her hair was buzzed close enough to sharpen the shape of her skull. There was no fandom shirt beneath the flannel, no costume, no joke pinned to her pass. She looked so completely herself that the effect was almost formal.
Then a group crossed between them and Jenny turned back to the woman in green armour.
She thought about the stranger twice in the next half hour and each time assumed she was gone.
By then Jenny’s right boot had begun to remind her of its existence. Not pain yet, only friction at the back of the heel. She had known that seam might be a problem. At home, the boots had survived long trial walks around the apartment, up and down stairs, even a trip to the corner store beneath a long coat that concealed most of the costume. Convention floors were different. Concrete made promises no carpet did. Jenny adjusted the way her foot landed and continued.
Her friends wanted the retrospective before lunch. Jenny had wanted it since the programme was released.
The exhibit occupied a quieter section beyond the largest commercial booths, where temporary walls created an irregular sequence of galleries. Light fell more evenly there. The noise of the main floor remained, but softened, transformed into background vibration. Jenny entered with her sword secured more closely along her side and immediately felt the peculiar emotional confusion that old Sonja art could still produce in her: recognition without memory, as if images she had not seen for twenty years had nevertheless been stored behind her ribs.
There were covers enlarged beyond their original scale, production sketches, photographs of costume tests, handwritten notes beneath reproductions of pencilled pages. Jenny’s friends moved more quickly. They knew she would not. One of them touched her shoulder, said they were going ahead to the next case, and Jenny nodded without looking away from a sequence of three inked panels showing Sonja in a mountain pass.
When she finally moved on, she saw the large woman again.
Riri stood in front of a cover Jenny knew so well that she could have described its faults with her eyes closed.
That made Jenny slow.
There were more conventionally beautiful covers on the wall. More famous ones. More dramatic ones. This one had Sonja angled across a ruined stairway with two attackers above her and another coming from below. The composition was violent with diagonals. Jenny loved the issue and had argued privately with the cover for years.
Riri was not looking at Sonja’s body.
She was looking at her feet.
Jenny came to stand several steps away. One friend glanced from Jenny to the stranger, read something accurately, and drifted farther down the wall.
Jenny gave herself time. She did not like forcing conversation merely because she wanted it. The woman’s eyes travelled up the cover, stopped at Sonja’s sword arm, returned to the lower attacker, then narrowed slightly.
Jenny said, “The inside is better.”
The woman turned.
Up close, the scale difference became almost absurd, but nothing in Riri’s face made Jenny feel reduced by it. Her eyes were a little lighter than Jenny had expected. There were fine lines at their corners. Her expression was open, assessing without being suspicious.
“The fight?” Riri asked.
“The whole issue, but especially the fight.” Jenny stepped nearer the reproduction and indicated the lower half without touching the glass. “The cover cheats the stairs. It makes them steeper so all three attackers fit into the shape.”
Riri’s mouth shifted. “That’s not the part bothering me.”
Jenny looked up at her. “What is?”
“She’s dead if that man above her moves first.”
Jenny smiled.
Not because the answer was funny. Because it was an answer.
Riri saw the smile and felt something warm move through her chest with surprising directness.
Jenny turned toward the image again. “He doesn’t.”
“I know he doesn’t. I’m saying the picture depends on him waiting like he bought a ticket.”
“The interior pages make his footing worse.”
“Yeah.” Riri leaned a little closer to the cover. “And they give her room to turn. Here her back foot’s trapped.”
Jenny had seen the cover hundreds of times. She looked at the back foot.
It was trapped.
She felt the small clean pleasure of having an old thing become new.
“The artist wanted the line from the sword to continue through the stair rail,” she said. “That’s why her leg is there.”
“I get why it’s there.”
“You just don’t forgive it.”
“No.”
There was no smugness in the answer. Riri said it as plainly as if Jenny had asked whether she wanted sugar.
Jenny’s smile widened. “I do.”
Riri looked down at her. “You forgive bad footing?”
“For that composition, yes.”
“Dangerous.”
Jenny laughed softly, not at Riri but out of pleasure. “Only in art.”
Riri looked back at the cover. “Inside, third page of the fight. She hooks his ankle with the step and uses the rail to change direction.”
Jenny’s head turned so quickly that the red hair shifted over one shoulder.
Riri pointed toward the display label, where a thumbnail reproduction showed several interior pages. “That’s the good part.”
“You remember the page?”
“Not the number.”
“You remember the movement.”
“Yeah.”
Jenny looked at her then with a different kind of attention.
Riri had seen attraction often enough to recognize its arrival without needing to make a spectacle of it. She did not straighten. She did not deepen her voice. She did not move closer merely because she could. She looked back at Jenny and let herself enjoy being looked at.
Jenny said, “I’m Jenny.”
“Riri.”
“Riri.” Jenny repeated it once, gently, fixing the sound. “Have you read much of this period?”
“Enough to have opinions. Not enough to win anything.”
“I don’t think there’s a prize.”
“There’s always somebody who thinks there is.”
Jenny considered that and nodded. “That’s true.”
She did not answer with a joke. Riri noticed. The absence was not stiffness. Jenny simply met statements where they were. When she smiled, the smile did not sharpen into teasing. It stayed kind.
One of Jenny’s friends reappeared at her shoulder and said they were moving toward the original pages. Jenny introduced her by first name. Riri got the sense of two other friends nearby, all of them comfortable enough not to crowd. Jenny asked if Riri was going that way.
“I am now,” Riri said.
Jenny’s smile came again, bright and entirely unguarded.
They moved together.
The original pages slowed them more than the covers had.
Riri had seen photographs of inked comic art, but the physical sheets altered her sense of the work. White corrections crossed black lines. Pencil survived beneath ink in places, a ghost of decisions changed before print. Margins carried tiny notes and arrows. A hand had been drawn, erased, drawn again. The finished panel that had always looked inevitable in reproduction was exposed as a stack of choices.
Jenny stood close enough to the glass that the red hair brushed her shoulder when she tipped her head. Riri watched her eyes rather than the costume. Jenny looked at art the way some people listened to confession: attentively, without impatience, willing to let the thing take time.
“This is one of the pages I love,” Jenny said.
The page showed Sonja seated beside a low fire, sword on the ground near one boot, eating with her fingers while another woman spoke from the opposite side of the flames. Nothing spectacular occurred. In the next panel Sonja’s gaze had shifted slightly, and in the panel after that her hand rested nearer the sword.
Riri studied it. “She doesn’t trust her.”
“No.”
“But she stays.”
“Yes.” Jenny’s voice softened, though not with sentimentality. “She doesn’t confuse caution with isolation.”
Riri glanced at her.
Jenny was still looking at the page.
There were things Riri had learned through hockey that she had never acquired from theory. A player could be suspicious and still pass. She could protect herself and still belong to a line. She could know that another body might hurt her and choose proximity because the work required it. Trust did not have to be innocent in order to be real.
“She’s got the sword where she can reach it without making a show of reaching,” Riri said.
Jenny nodded quickly. “Exactly.”
“The other woman knows that.”
“She should.”
“You like that part.”
“I do.”
Riri looked down at her. “More than the fight upstairs?”
Jenny considered it with such seriousness that Riri nearly laughed, but did not. The question had been partly light, but Jenny was giving it full weight.
“I think so,” she said at last. “The fights tell you what Sonja can do. Pages like this tell you what she thinks strength is for.”
Riri’s eyes returned to the page. “That’s a better answer than mine.”
“What’s yours?”
“I like the fight.”
Jenny laughed then, delighted, and Riri felt the sound more than she expected.
They continued through the display, and the conversation widened without either of them deciding that it should. Jenny knew runs Riri had never read, artists whose names Riri had forgotten, changes in the character’s voice across decades, alternate interpretations she liked and several she did not. Riri found no reason to pretend otherwise. When Jenny mentioned a story she did not know, she said, “Haven’t read it.” When Jenny’s expression brightened and she began explaining why it mattered, Riri listened.
At one display Jenny told her, “You should read that one.”
“Good or necessary?”
Jenny stopped.
Riri waited.
Jenny looked at the cover again. “Necessary if you care about that period. Good in parts.”
“How many parts?”
“Enough that I’m glad I read it. Not enough that I’d give it to you first.”
“Then what would you give me first?”
Jenny’s gaze slid over the wall, mentally rearranging years of reading. “Something where the horse matters.”
Riri looked at her.
Jenny noticed. “You like Sonja on horseback.”
“How do you know that?”
“You stopped longer at every horse image.”
Riri smiled. “You watch people.”
“I do.”
There was no embarrassment in the admission. Jenny said it like another fact about herself, not a confession. Riri liked that too.
“I like when she looks like she knows the horse,” Riri said. “Not just sitting on one because somebody wanted a dramatic cover. Weight in the stirrups, hands where they should be. Horse doing something besides posing.”
Jenny’s eyes warmed. “You care about bodies knowing what they’re doing.”
“Usually.”
“Hands especially?”
“Feet first.”
Jenny smiled. “I start with hands.”
That became an argument only in the gentlest sense. They moved from one image to another, each making a case. Riri pointed out a sword grip that could not have survived impact. Jenny showed her a panel where Sonja’s hand, relaxed around a cup, said more about fatigue than the dialogue. Riri objected to an illustration where a horse’s front leg appeared nearly boneless. Jenny defended the colour and not the anatomy. At another page, Sonja was shown climbing a stone wall with one arm extended and both feet placed carefully below her; Riri approved so immediately that Jenny laughed again.
“You really do have standards.”
“Everybody should.”
“For climbing women?”
“For drawings that want me to believe she can climb.”
Jenny’s smile remained open. “That’s fair.”
There was no bite hidden inside it. Riri began to notice how unusual that was. Jenny could disagree without sharpening. She could find pleasure in contradiction. When she changed her mind, she simply changed it. She did not perform defeat or pretend she had meant something else. When she held to a position, she did so with the same softness and a firmness that made softness irrelevant to the outcome.
They reached a case displaying costume studies from several productions and promotional shoots. Riri disliked half of them on sight.
“Boots,” Jenny said.
Riri looked down. “What?”
“You’re making a face at the boots.”
“I’m making a face at whoever thought those belonged on a woman walking through mud.”
Jenny leaned toward the sketch. The boots were thigh-high, high-heeled and laced in a way that would have taken several minutes to remove. “They are impractical.”
“They’re an ankle injury with straps.”
“They’re very beautiful.”
Riri looked at her.
Jenny’s expression was sincere. “Both can be true.”
Riri laughed. “You’d wear them?”
“For a photograph. Not across Cimmeria.”
“That’s the correct answer.”
“I’m relieved.”
“You shouldn’t be. Your boots pass.”
Jenny glanced down at her own. “Mostly.”
The word made Riri look again, not at the boots themselves this time but at Jenny’s stance. She had shifted subtly onto her left foot. The right heel was half a fraction forward, avoiding pressure.
“Rubbing?” Riri asked.
Jenny’s eyebrows lifted. “A little.”
“You got something for it?”
“In my bag. I’m waiting until we stop.”
Riri nodded and did not make more of it.
Jenny registered that with the same quiet attention she gave everything else.
Her friends had drifted ahead again. One of them returned to say they were going to a panel in twenty minutes. Jenny checked the time. There was no awkward negotiation. She told them she was staying at the retrospective for a while longer and would meet them afterward. Her friend’s glance moved between Jenny and Riri, not subtle but affectionate. Jenny did not blush. Riri gave the woman a small nod and received one back.
When they were alone again, Jenny said, “You’re Canadian.”
Riri looked down at her. “That obvious?”
“Not from your accent.”
“What gave me away?”
“You said ‘about’ normally.”
Riri blinked.
Jenny’s face remained perfectly sincere for one dangerous second, then she smiled so brightly that Riri finally understood she had made a joke.
It was not sarcasm. There was no edge in it. The joke had been built entirely out of affection for a familiar cliché.
Riri laughed. “That was terrible.”
“I know.”
“You’re from New York.”
“Yes.”
“That one I knew before you spoke.”
Jenny tilted her head. “How?”
“You walk like stopping in a doorway is a felony.”
Jenny laughed, and the red hair shifted down her back.
They left the retrospective together.
Outside the gallery, the convention seemed louder than before. The visual density returned all at once: banners suspended from the ceiling, glowing screens, queues curling around booths, colour everywhere. Riri automatically positioned herself slightly to Jenny’s left where the sword extended less into traffic, not crowding her but creating an easy barrier against people who moved without looking. Jenny noticed after half a minute. She did not comment.
A group of teenagers stopped Jenny for another photograph. Riri stepped away enough not to become part of it. Jenny gave them Sonja again: chin higher, shoulders settled, sword angled across the body. The transformation fascinated Riri more now that she had heard her speak. Jenny did not imitate hardness. She did not snarl. She simply withdrew some of her everyday openness and replaced it with stillness.
Then the camera lowered and she was back, asking one teenager how she had made the embossed leather on her costume.
Riri watched her hands while she listened.
Jenny’s hands were small, obviously, but not delicate in the useless sense people attached to the word. The fingers moved precisely. She touched materials with permission. She gestured economically. When she handled her sword, she did so with an unconscious awareness of its length. When a child approached, those same hands lowered automatically into the child’s visual field rather than descending onto a head or shoulder uninvited.
Riri thought of what Jenny had said about starting with hands.
She understood it better now.
They found the first aid station near a bank of escalators, though Jenny did not need the station itself. She stopped beside a low concrete ledge, set the safe sword carefully against her thigh, and unfastened a small pouch hidden beneath the edge of her belt. From it came a folded strip of moleskin, a plaster, a tiny pair of blunt scissors and a packet of antiseptic wipe.
Riri looked down at the kit. “Prepared.”
“I knew the seam was questionable.”
“You wore them anyway.”
“Yes.”
“Fair.”
Jenny sat, lifted her right foot and began undoing the boot. The movement exposed a practical problem. With the sword, the pouch and the scale armour, leaning far enough to reach the heel pulled one strap at the side of her costume tighter than it wanted to go.
Riri saw it before Jenny said anything. She did not reach.
“Want me to hold the sword?”
Jenny looked up.
The question itself pleased her more than it should have, perhaps because the day had already included three strangers asking to lift her for photographs as though four feet eight inches made her public luggage. She had declined each request pleasantly. Two people had accepted the answer. One had asked again in a different form, apparently imagining that persistence could turn consent into a technicality.
“Yes, please.”
Riri took the sword by the grip, stepped back half a pace and held it upright beside her leg. In Riri’s hand, the thing looked suddenly smaller. Jenny noticed the contrast and enjoyed it without feeling herself diminished by it.
She peeled off the boot, cleaned the hot place at her heel and fixed the moleskin over it. Riri looked away when passing strangers glanced too long, not from modesty on Jenny’s behalf but because there was no reason to stare at someone tending her foot. When Jenny pulled the boot back on, she flexed her ankle and stood.
“Better?”
“Much.”
Riri returned the sword hilt first.
Jenny took it. “Thank you.”
“Any time.”
The words were ordinary. Their effect was not.
Jenny had learned over years that physical size revealed people quickly. Some large women became apologetic around her, collapsing shoulders or crouching too often as if equality required pretending they were not tall. Others became playfully proprietary before permission existed, resting elbows on her head, steering her by the shoulders, lifting her, moving her out of the way. Neither response felt like recognition. Riri had done neither. She stood at her full height and allowed Jenny to remain at hers.
They rejoined the flow of the hall.
A vendor’s display stopped Jenny three aisles later. It held older collected editions, prints, replica jewellery, pins and a glass case of small metal pieces. A narrow silver pendant shaped like a sword hung from a hook near the top, almost at Riri’s eye level and well above Jenny’s.
Jenny stepped closer, craned her neck and read the tiny card beneath it.
Riri waited.
Jenny looked at the seller. “May I see the sword pendant?”
The seller was helping another customer and raised one finger to indicate a moment. Jenny nodded. Riri could have taken the pendant from the open hook. It would have required barely lifting her hand.
She did not.
Jenny glanced at her, then back at the pendant.
Riri caught the glance. “Want me to get it?”
Jenny felt the answer come with a small, unexpected warmth. “Yes, please.”
Riri reached up, lifted the card and chain from the hook and placed it in Jenny’s waiting palm.
The seller returned and explained the metal, the maker, the price. Jenny examined the clasp and the little engraving on the blade. Riri watched her do it. Jenny did not buy things quickly. She turned the pendant over, checked the chain, asked one question about nickel content, then smiled and said she would take it.
While the seller wrapped it, Jenny said quietly, “You always ask.”
Riri’s eyes moved to her. “Ask what?”
“Before helping.”
“Usually.”
“People don’t always.”
Riri’s expression changed, not dramatically. Something in it became more exact. “That gets old.”
“Yes.” Jenny accepted the small paper packet from the seller. “It does.”
Riri did not say she could imagine. She did not offer a story about someone else short she had known. She did not turn Jenny’s comment into a speech about respect. She merely nodded, and when they began walking again she let Jenny set the pace.
The afternoon gathered around them in layers. They attended part of a panel about sword choreography because Riri wanted to see whether the speaker knew what she was talking about. She did. Riri leaned forward with her forearms on her knees while Jenny sat beside her with the sword laid carefully across her lap. During questions, someone asked why so many fantasy fights looked weightless. The speaker demonstrated how actors could sell impact by showing recovery rather than only contact. Riri murmured, “Exactly,” under her breath. Jenny heard and smiled.
Afterward they passed a booth where an artist was signing prints. Jenny knew the work and Riri did not. They joined the short line because Jenny wanted to thank the artist for one particular image of Sonja crossing a river. When her turn came, Jenny did not lead with praise so broad it meant nothing. She told the artist what had stayed with her: the way Sonja held her boots above the water in one hand, sword in the other, annoyed rather than heroic, her hair tied badly at the nape. The artist’s tired face brightened. She remembered drawing it. They spoke for several minutes.
Riri stood a little behind Jenny and watched.
Jenny’s kindness was not indiscriminate softness. Riri began understanding that more clearly each hour. She listened carefully enough to make her praise specific. She looked at the person in front of her, not at her own idea of being kind. When another fan edged forward and interrupted the artist mid-answer, Jenny turned, smiled and said, “She was still speaking.” Her voice remained gentle. The man stopped.
No embarrassment. No apology for the boundary.
The artist finished her thought.
Outside the booth Riri said, “You do that well.”
Jenny looked up. “Do what?”
“Tell people no without turning it into a fight.”
Jenny considered. “Sometimes people make it a fight anyway.”
“Yeah.”
“But I don’t think I have to start angry for my answer to count.”
Riri’s mouth moved into a slow smile. “No. You don’t.”
They were standing near a wall where the traffic thinned. Jenny felt Riri’s attention settle on her with unmistakable attraction, not hidden and not pushed forward. It made the air around her feel slightly warmer.
Jenny was attracted to Riri too. That fact had become simpler rather than more complicated as the day went on.
The first thing had been the body, because Jenny had never considered physical desire morally inferior to other forms of recognition. Riri was beautiful to her. The scale of her, the hard width of her shoulders, the long practical line of her legs in dark denim, the buzzed hair, the forearms that looked capable of lifting and building and bracing. But desire did what it usually did in Jenny: it sharpened detail. She had begun noticing the pale line of an old scar near Riri’s thumb, the slight stiffness when she turned one knee too quickly, the habit of checking behind her before stopping in a crowd, the way she listened without loading her face with exaggerated proof that she was listening.
And her hands.
Jenny had noticed those from the beginning. Riri’s hands were broad, knuckles marked, nails short, one finger carrying the slight flattening of an old break. They were not restless. When empty, they rested. When useful, they became exact. She had held Jenny’s sword without playing with it. She had taken the pendant without assuming. She had opened a stubborn bottle for a teenager at the panel only after the teenager pushed it toward her and asked.
Jenny wanted to know what those hands made.
She asked.
“Wood mostly,” Riri said as they moved toward the food concourse. “Repairs. Shelving. Benches. Whatever somebody needs and I can do without making it worse.”
“Furniture?”
“Some.”
“Do you build from plans?”
“Depends.”
“What do you like making?”
Riri thought about it. “Things that get used.”
Jenny’s smile softened. “That makes sense.”
“Does it?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Jenny looked up at her. “You notice function before decoration.”
Riri glanced down at Jenny’s scale armour. “I noticed both.”
The answer was direct enough that Jenny felt a small flush under the makeup along her cheeks.
Riri did not grin at having caused it. She simply kept walking beside her.
They bought water and something small to eat. Jenny checked ingredients before choosing, a quick practiced scan. Riri noticed but did not ask. Jenny noticed that too. They stood at a high counter because every table was occupied. For Jenny, the counter came inconveniently high. She made no complaint. Riri rested her elbows on it and ate while looking over the moving crowd.
A group in elaborate armour passed. One woman had built enormous wings that folded behind her each time she turned sideways through a narrow space. Riri watched the mechanism.
Jenny said, “You’re going to go home and build wings.”
“No.”
“You thought about it.”
“I thought about the hinge.”
“That’s the beginning.”
Riri looked down at her. “You trying to recruit me into cosplay?”
Jenny shook her head. “No. I like you as you are.”
The statement came so simply that Riri did not have an answer ready.
Jenny took another sip of water. She had not meant it as a line. That made it land harder.
Riri looked out at the crowd again and felt herself smiling.
A few minutes later Jenny asked, “How long have you liked Sonja?”
Riri wiped her thumb along the condensation on her bottle. “Since I was young.”
“How young?”
“Early teens. Maybe before, but that’s when I started buying anything myself.”
“What was it?”
Riri did not need to ask what she meant. “One cover. Used shop. She was on a horse, coming down a hill through snow. Sword low, not raised. Horse looked mean.”
Jenny’s eyes brightened with recognition. “The blue border?”
Riri looked at her. “Yeah.”
“I know it.”
“Of course you do.”
Jenny smiled. “I like that one too.”
“She looked cold.”
“She was cold.”
“Exactly. Most covers act like weather’s decorative.”
Jenny laughed softly. “That one doesn’t. Her fingers are red.”
Riri stared at her for a second. “You remember the fingers.”
“I start with hands.”
Riri laughed then, a low sound that made Jenny feel pleased all the way down to her toes.
They finished eating and kept moving.
The convention had begun to change by late afternoon. The first bright intensity had softened into fatigue. Costumes loosened. Wigs came off and were carried under arms. Children slept against shoulders. Purchases multiplied into plastic bags. People sat on the floor along walls wherever security allowed it. The hall smelled faintly of warm fabric, coffee, printed paper and the artificial cold of air conditioning fighting too many bodies.
Jenny remained Sonja, but the edges of the performance had relaxed. She carried the sword lower. A few strands of red hair had escaped near her ear. One bracer had rotated slightly. Riri liked the costume more for those signs of use.
They stopped at a display of replica weapons. Jenny was explaining why one particular sword design annoyed her when she felt a small movement at her hip.
A scale had lifted away from the underlying support.
She touched it carefully.
Riri saw her expression. “What?”
“One of the attachments.”
“Loose?”
“Yes.”
“Can I see?”
Jenny turned slightly. “Please.”
Riri crouched.
The movement brought an immediate visual reversal. Riri’s large body folded until her face was level with Jenny’s waist, one knee bent, the other boot planted wide for balance. She did not touch Jenny at first. She looked. The loose scale sat near the left side where the belt and lower armour met.
“What’s under it?”
“Fabric backing. The scale is tied at two points and anchored with a small clip.”
“Clip broke?”
“I think it pulled free.”
“May I?”
“Yes.”
Riri used two fingers to lift the edge of the scale. Her touch was careful enough that Jenny barely felt it. The fastening had not broken; one loop had slipped over the clip after hours of movement.
“Easy,” Riri said.
Jenny looked down at the top of her buzzed head. “You can fix it?”
“Probably ugly.”
“It’s underneath.”
“Then definitely.”
Riri reached into the lower pocket of her flannel and began producing things with the unceremonious practicality of a person who believed pockets existed to solve problems: two small cable ties, a folded strip of black tape, a stubby pencil, three coins, a key, a wrapped mint and a narrow multitool.
Jenny stared.
Riri looked up. “What?”
“You carry cable ties.”
“I carry useful things.”
Jenny’s face filled with such genuine happiness that Riri paused.
“This is wonderful,” Jenny said.
“What is?”
“Red Sonja being repaired in public by a Canadian hockey coach with cable ties from her flannel.”
Riri laughed. “Don’t put that on the programme.”
“I wish I could.”
Riri threaded one tie through the backing and the remaining loop, trimmed it with the multitool and tucked the cut end where it could not scratch. She reinforced the original clip with a small piece of tape hidden beneath the scale.
“Move.”
Jenny twisted carefully at the waist, lifted one arm, then the other. The scale stayed flat.
“Again.”
She moved more fully.
“Good?” Jenny asked.
Riri inspected the line. “Good.”
She rose.
The climb back to standing made the difference in their height reassert itself all at once. Jenny tipped her head farther and farther until she met Riri’s eyes. Riri held out the little broken clip.
“Souvenir.”
Jenny accepted it solemnly. “I’ll treasure it.”
Riri knew by now that Jenny did not use sarcasm. The statement, somehow, was completely sincere.
“You actually will, won’t you?”
“Yes.”
Riri shook her head, smiling.
Jenny tucked the clip into her hidden pouch.
A woman passing nearby had watched the last part of the repair. She stopped and asked if Riri did costume work. Riri said no. The woman pointed to a cracked strap on her prop shield and asked whether Riri had more tape.
Riri looked at Jenny.
Jenny’s smile widened. “You’ve opened a shop.”
For the next twenty minutes, Riri became unofficial repair staff.
The shield strap took tape and a cable tie. A teenager’s foam spear needed a split reinforced. A child’s cape clasp had bent; Riri adjusted it with the multitool while the child watched as if witnessing surgery. Jenny stayed beside her, holding objects when asked, passing tape, making sure people did not crowd. There was something almost absurdly natural about the arrangement. Riri worked. Jenny attended. Neither took over the other’s competence.
When the last person left, Riri folded the remaining tape and put it back in her pocket.
Jenny said, “You like being useful.”
“Yeah.”
“More than being impressive.”
Riri looked at her. “Usually the useful thing is more impressive.”
Jenny nodded. “I agree.”
Something settled between them then, a recognition deeper than flirtation and more dangerous for being quiet.
By the time the overhead announcement warned that the exhibition floor would close in forty-five minutes, Jenny’s friends had found her twice and lost her twice. The second reunion lasted long enough for them to exchange purchases, compare photographs and establish that everyone had survived. One of them had acquired a painted mask too large for her bag. Another had changed out of high boots into sneakers and carried the boots by their straps. They looked at Riri with the easy curiosity of people who knew Jenny well enough to see that something had happened and liked her well enough not to interrogate it in public.
Jenny introduced Riri again to the friend who had missed the first introduction. No one asked what Riri was doing with them. She was simply there now.
They drifted together toward the final aisles. Riri learned that Jenny’s friends possessed the kind of long familiarity that made speech optional. One saw Jenny reach unconsciously toward the back of her right boot and, without comment, handed her a spare plaster. Jenny accepted it with a grateful smile. Another passed her a small paper cup of coffee from somewhere Riri had not noticed them stop. Jenny took the lid off, smelled it and made a face so slight that only people watching her would catch it.
“Too sweet?” her friend asked.
“A little.”
“Trade?”
Jenny tasted the other cup, then nodded. They exchanged them without fuss.
Riri watched Jenny add a small sealed container of milk she had been carrying in her bag.
“You travel with milk?” she asked once the friends moved ahead.
Jenny glanced at the container. “Sometimes.”
“That serious about coffee?”
Jenny smiled. “Partly.”
Riri waited.
Jenny poured the milk slowly. “I keep kosher. Not severely, but sincerely. It’s easier if I don’t leave every little thing to chance.”
Riri nodded. “Makes sense.”
Jenny looked at her, perhaps expecting a question.
Riri had one, but not an urgent one. “This place going to make dinner annoying?”
“No. New York is kind to me in that way.”
“Good.”
That was all.
Jenny felt another one of those small releases she was beginning to associate with Riri. People often responded to religious practice by turning it into a test. Some wanted rules. Some wanted exceptions. Some wanted to know whether she was doing it correctly. Riri wanted to know whether Jenny could eat.
She sipped the corrected coffee. “Better.”
Riri lifted one eyebrow. “Important.”
“Very.”
They reached a booth selling older paperbacks and comics from long boxes. Jenny knelt to look through a lower box. Riri stayed standing beside her for a while, then lowered herself onto one heel because the angle let her see the covers more easily. Jenny moved slowly through the books, fingertips touching only the upper corners.
“You collect?” Riri asked.
“Some things. I read more than I collect.”
“Difference?”
“Collecting can become owning for its own sake. I like owning books I’ll return to.”
Riri nodded. “Same with tools.”
Jenny looked up from the box. “You don’t buy tools you won’t use?”
“I’ve bought tools I thought I’d use.”
“That’s different.”
“Exactly.”
Jenny found an issue, lifted it halfway and stopped.
Riri saw the cover. Sonja stood in profile beneath a black sky, horse reins in one hand, cloak whipping behind her. It was not the snow cover they had discussed earlier, but it had the same quality of weather belonging to the scene rather than decorating it.
“You have that?” Riri asked.
“Yes.”
“You want another one?”
“No.” Jenny lowered it carefully. “I just like seeing it.”
Riri understood.
The closing announcement came again. People began moving toward exits in thicker streams. The day’s accumulated purchases shifted against legs. Booth staff started covering display cases. Somewhere behind them a child was crying with the pure exhausted grief of someone who had been heroic for too many hours.
Jenny’s friends gathered near the end of the aisle. One was leaving immediately for Queens. Another had dinner plans downtown. The third asked Jenny whether she was still coming with them for drinks.
Jenny looked at Riri.
There was no attempt to conceal the choice. Riri liked that.
“I think I’m going to stay out,” Jenny said.
Her friend’s eyes flicked to Riri and warmed. “All right. Text me when you’re home.”
“I will.”
The goodbye hugs were quick and familiar. Jenny had to angle her sword away each time. Her friends told Riri it was nice meeting her. Riri said the same and meant it.
Then they were gone into the crowd.
Jenny and Riri stood beside one another while people streamed around them.
Neither invented a reason.
Riri said, “You hungry?”
Jenny said, “Yes.”
“Want to get dinner?”
“Yes.”
Simple as that.
The costume required partial dismantling before they could leave comfortably. Jenny had arranged for a small changing area through the convention cloakroom, where she had stored a garment bag and a soft tote. Riri waited outside rather than assuming invitation. Ten minutes later Jenny emerged altered but unmistakably still carrying Sonja with her.
The sword was packed into a padded sleeve. The bracers were gone. The scale skirt had been removed and folded into the tote with remarkable care. Jenny had pulled a black long-sleeved top beneath the upper armour, then covered most of that with a dark coat left open at the front. The red hair remained. So did the boots, now visible beneath a long charcoal skirt that replaced the lower armour. The result was less costume than a woman on her way home from having been somebody else all day.
Riri looked at her slowly.
Jenny noticed. “Better for public transit.”
“Worse for me.”
Jenny blinked.
Riri’s gaze returned to her face. “I liked the armour.”
The sincerity of it made Jenny’s smile immediate. “I know.”
“Still do.”
“I know that too.”
Riri took the padded sword sleeve when Jenny offered it. She did not take the tote until Jenny said, “Would you mind carrying this for a little while? My shoulder is tired.”
“No.” Riri slung it carefully over the opposite shoulder from the sword.
Outside, evening had condensed New York into light.
The convention centre doors opened onto cooler air carrying exhaust, street food, damp pavement and the mineral smell that came before rain. After hours of artificial light, the sky looked startlingly large even between buildings. People spilled onto the sidewalks in bright remnants of costume. A superhero in half-removed makeup hailed a cab. Two women carrying enormous wings waited at the crossing. Someone farther down the block was still wearing a crown.
Jenny breathed deeply.
Riri felt the cold find the sweat at the back of her neck and welcomed it.
“Quiet place?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Jenny named a small diner several blocks away where she knew the kitchen well enough to trust it. They walked.
The city suited Jenny differently than the convention had. Riri saw it almost immediately. She moved with confidence that had nothing to do with costume. She knew when to cross before the light changed and when not to try. She slipped around slow groups without impatience. At crowded corners she did not hesitate or ask Riri to clear space. Riri adapted to her pace and discovered it was quicker than expected.
“You do walk like doorways are illegal,” Riri said.
Jenny laughed. “I told you. Efficiency.”
The boot no longer seemed to be bothering her. Riri nevertheless shortened her stride slightly. She did it without thinking.
At the diner, the windows had fogged at the lower corners. The room was narrow, warm and only half full. Chrome edging caught yellow light. A radio played softly behind the counter. The woman at the register recognized Jenny and greeted her by name.
Jenny’s face brightened. “Hi, Marcia.”
Marcia looked at the red hair, then at Riri carrying a sword sleeve. “Convention?”
“Yes.”
“Good day?”
“Very.” Jenny’s glance moved to Riri, transparent with happiness. “Very good.”
Marcia smiled as though she understood more than Jenny had said and led them to a booth in the back.
Riri put the tote and sword safely against the wall. Jenny slid into one side. Riri took the opposite bench and discovered immediately that the table seemed designed to make her knees regret her size. She adjusted sideways.
Jenny noticed. “We can move.”
“I’m fine.”
“Are you actually?”
Riri tested the angle. “Mostly.”
Jenny looked toward the neighbouring table, which had chairs rather than fixed benches. “That one would be easier.”
Riri could have said it did not matter. Instead she nodded. “Yeah.”
They moved.
Jenny chose coffee before she looked at the food. Marcia brought it with milk already on the side, sealed and marked. Jenny thanked her. Riri ordered coffee too, black, then studied the menu.
For several minutes they said nothing. The absence felt good. Around them, plates clinked. Someone near the front laughed loudly and then lowered her voice. Rain finally began against the glass in a scatter too soft to be heard except when traffic passed.
Jenny removed the wig.
Riri had not realized it was partly a wig until Jenny reached beneath the red hair and loosened it with practiced hands. Her own hair had been braided and pinned close beneath it. She set the red mass carefully on the empty chair beside her, revealing herself all at once in a way more intimate than the amount of skin she had shown in the costume.
Riri stared.
Jenny’s natural hair was flattened and imperfect from hours under the cap. She touched it self-consciously. “It will recover.”
“You’re beautiful.”
Jenny’s hand stopped.
Riri said it without lowering her voice and without turning the compliment into a joke.
Jenny’s expression softened so deeply that Riri felt almost exposed by it.
“Thank you,” Jenny said. “So are you.”
Riri had heard that from women in more forms than she could count. She had heard it hungry, laughing, drunk, awed, careless, demanding, affectionate. Jenny said it like a fact she was glad to be able to give.
Riri looked down at the menu for a moment.
When she raised her eyes, Jenny was smiling into her coffee.
Their food came. Conversation, when it resumed, moved away from Sonja almost by mutual instinct.
Riri told Jenny about the team she coached, not as an explanation of herself but because Jenny asked what she liked about the work. She spoke about defenders first. Jenny knew very little about hockey, enough to follow the shape of a game but not its details, and Riri enjoyed explaining without simplifying her into a child.
“So the best thing a defender can do might be something nobody notices?” Jenny asked.
“Often.”
“Prevent the exciting thing.”
“Exactly. If she’s positioned right, the play dies before anybody gets to call it a play.”
“That sounds like office work.”
Riri looked at her. “How?”
“The best administrator prevents disasters no one knows almost happened.”
Riri laughed. “There it is.”
Jenny told her about work in offices, about the strange dignity of making a complicated system function without becoming visible inside it. She liked order, but not order for its own sake. She liked creating conditions in which other people could do what they needed to do. She spoke about filing systems with enough interest that Riri did not find them boring.
“You label everything?” Riri asked.
“Not everything.”
“Most things.”
“Yes.”
“Colour coding?”
“When useful.”
Riri smiled. “You’d love my workshop.”
Jenny looked interested immediately. “Is it organized?”
“Organized enough.”
“That sounds suspicious.”
“Everything has a place.”
“Do you put it back?”
Riri took a drink of coffee.
Jenny waited.
“Usually.”
Jenny’s smile turned tender with amusement rather than triumphant. “Then I would probably like it.”
Riri found herself wanting Jenny there. The thought came unexpectedly complete: Jenny standing in the workshop, small hands touching a plan on the bench, asking why one chisel was shaped differently from another. Riri did not make the image larger than it was. She let it exist.
They talked about Vancouver. Jenny had visited but never lived there. Riri described rain that seemed less like weather than atmosphere, mountains appearing at the ends of ordinary streets, neighbourhoods changing around people who stayed long enough to remember what had been demolished. Jenny spoke about New York with the intimacy of irritation. She loved it without believing love required pretending it was easy.
“Everyone wants New York to be a symbol,” she said. “It is mostly a place where people need groceries.”
Riri smiled. “Vancouver too.”
“People need groceries there?”
“Sometimes.”
Jenny laughed, soft and genuine.
They spoke about neighbourhood shops disappearing, old signs surviving above businesses that had changed three times, the strange grief of seeing a familiar building emptied even when nothing important had happened inside it. Jenny said she remembered streets by who had stood behind counters. Riri remembered neighbourhoods by rinks, lumber yards, cafés and houses where she had once been expected to fix something.
The coffee was refilled.
Jenny added milk, stirred twice and stopped. Riri watched the ritual become visible through repetition: Jenny touched the cup handle before lifting it, tested the heat, drank only when satisfied. Nothing hurried her pleasure.
“Never alcohol?” Riri asked after Marcia offered dessert and a liqueur coffee special to another table.
“Never.”
“Religion?”
“No. Preference.” Jenny smiled. “I like knowing exactly how I feel.”
Riri nodded. “That tracks.”
“I also like coffee more than most things people try to replace it with.”
“That tracks too.”
Jenny looked down at her cup. “My father cared about kosher milk. I kept the habit. It feels like a small way of not letting ordinary things become careless.”
Riri listened.
Jenny had not intended to mention her father. The sentence arrived because Riri had made space for it rather than asking for biography. She felt no regret after saying it.
“He’d like that you still do it?” Riri asked.
“I think so.”
Riri nodded once. “Then good.”
No demand followed. Jenny’s gratitude was almost physical.
The rain strengthened. Water traced the windows in silver lines. The diner grew emptier around them, not late enough to close but past the dinner rush. Jenny’s sword sleeve remained propped against the wall. The red wig sat on its chair like a sleeping animal.
Riri leaned back, one large hand around her coffee cup.
Jenny looked at that hand.
Riri noticed.
“You start with hands,” she said.
Jenny met her eyes. “I do.”
“What do mine say?”
Jenny could have made the answer flirtatious. The attraction between them was already clear enough that she did not need to manufacture heat. She looked instead.
The right hand held the cup. A pale scar crossed the base of the thumb. The knuckles were thick. The nails were clean but not polished. There were small rough places along the fingers that suggested wood, tools, cold, work. The hand rested easily around something breakable.
“They say you use them,” Jenny said. “They say you’ve hurt them and kept using them. They say you’re careful with things that require care.”
Riri became very still.
Jenny continued, because the truth deserved completion. “And I think you know exactly how strong you are.”
Riri’s eyes stayed on her. “That good or bad?”
“Good.”
Jenny’s voice was gentle. “Very good.”
Riri let out a slow breath.
“What do mine say?” Jenny asked.
Riri looked.
Jenny’s hands lay around the coffee cup. Small, pale against the ceramic, tidy nails, a faint line where one finger had been pressed all day against the sword grip. Riri remembered them fixing moleskin to a heel, checking a pendant clasp, touching old comic pages only at their protected edges, lowering toward children without grabbing them.
“They say you decide before you touch.”
Jenny’s eyes widened slightly.
Riri went on. “Not slow. Just deliberate. You don’t put your hands on something because it’s there.”
Jenny looked down at them.
“That’s the nicest thing anyone has said about my hands,” she said.
“I meant it.”
“I know.”
That knowledge passed between them with a depth that neither tried to lighten.
When the bill arrived, Riri reached for it. Jenny put two fingers on the paper first.
Riri stopped.
Jenny smiled. “May I pay half?”
“Yeah.”
“Thank you.”
Riri watched her calculate without drama. No game. No argument about who had invited whom. They split it, tipped well and gathered their things.
The rain had eased by the time they stepped outside. The street shone black and gold under lamps. Air moved cold against their faces. Jenny put the red wig into its storage net and packed it in the tote. Her own hair was still flattened, though she had run wet fingers through it in the diner washroom. Riri liked it that way, unarranged.
They stood beneath the awning.
“So,” Riri said.
Jenny looked up.
Riri had spent most of her adult life comfortable with desire. She knew how to ask women home. She knew how to read the shape of a night. But something about Jenny made shortcuts feel wrong, not because Jenny was fragile or innocent, but because the quality between them deserved accuracy.
“I want to see you again,” Riri said.
Jenny’s smile began before the sentence finished. “I want to see you again too.”
“I’m in town through Monday.”
“I’m free tomorrow afternoon.”
“Coffee?”
“Yes.” Jenny’s smile deepened. “Definitely coffee.”
Riri laughed softly. “Good.”
They exchanged numbers under the awning while rain ticked from its edge. Jenny entered Riri’s name simply as Riri. Riri entered Jenny as Jenny. Neither needed more.
When the phones were put away, they remained standing there.
The sword and tote gave Riri’s hands somewhere to be. Jenny had none of the same shelter. She folded hers briefly around the strap of her coat, then let them fall.
“I also want to kiss you,” Riri said.
Jenny’s breath changed.
Riri did not move closer yet.
Jenny looked up the full distance between them. The height difference made the prospect complicated in a purely mechanical way. Riri could solve it easily by bending. She could solve it more dramatically by lifting Jenny. The thought crossed Jenny’s mind, and with it came the familiar small tension associated with hands appearing around her waist before she had chosen them.
Riri stayed where she was.
Jenny felt the tension disappear.
“I would like that,” she said.
Riri bent.
Not all the way at once. She lowered enough that Jenny could meet her halfway if she wanted. Jenny rose onto the front of her boots, one hand settling lightly against Riri’s flannel near the waist. Riri’s free hand came up, paused beside Jenny’s shoulder rather than taking hold, and Jenny leaned into it.
Only then did Riri touch her.
The hand rested broad and warm against the upper back, outside the coat.
The kiss was gentle.
Jenny had expected Riri’s size to make any contact feel engulfing. Instead she felt precision first. Riri’s mouth found hers without pressure, then waited. Jenny kissed back, more firmly. The city moved around them. A cab hissed through wet pavement. Someone hurried past under an umbrella. The diner door opened behind them and released a brief square of warmth.
Riri did not deepen the kiss until Jenny did.
Jenny’s fingers curled in the flannel. Riri’s hand spread slightly across her back, not moving lower. The difference in scale was unmistakable, but for once Jenny experienced it without the old flicker of being handled. Riri’s body surrounded space without taking Jenny’s choices with it.
They separated slowly.
Jenny remained close enough to feel Riri’s breath.
Riri looked at her face. “Good?”
Jenny smiled. “Very.”
Riri’s answering smile was quieter.
They kissed again.
This time Jenny reached first. She tugged lightly at the flannel and Riri bent without hesitation. The kiss lasted longer. Jenny felt the strength in Riri’s back under her palm, the easy balance of her body, the restraint that was not distance but attention. She understood with sudden clarity why Sonja had mattered to her for so long: not because strength was attractive only when softened, and not because gentleness redeemed strength, but because the two did not contradict each other in the first place.
Riri broke the kiss when Jenny’s boot slipped slightly on wet pavement.
Her hand tightened at Jenny’s back just enough to steady her.
Jenny laughed softly into Riri’s shoulder.
“Boots passed the convention,” Riri murmured. “Street’s another test.”
“They’re still beautiful.”
“Both can be true.”
Jenny looked up, delighted that Riri had remembered.
They began walking toward the subway.
Riri carried the sword and tote. Jenny did not ask for either back. At the entrance stairs, Riri slowed because the wet steps were slick. Jenny took the rail. Neither commented on the other’s caution.
At the bottom, the station was bright, tiled and warm. A train roared through the opposite platform before they reached the turnstiles, throwing stale air ahead of it. Jenny swiped through and waited while Riri managed the sword sleeve without clipping the barrier.
They stood together under the route map.
Jenny’s train would come first.
Riri disliked that fact more than she expected.
“So tomorrow,” Jenny said.
“Tomorrow.”
“I know a place with better coffee than the convention.”
“Low bar.”
Jenny nodded gravely. “Much better.”
Riri looked at her and smiled.
The train lights appeared in the tunnel.
Jenny turned toward the sound, then back to Riri. Her face held none of the coyness Riri had learned to distrust in moments like this. She was simply sorry to leave and happy there was a next time.
Riri handed over the tote first, then the sword.
Jenny adjusted both.
The train entered with a rush of wind. Doors opened.
Jenny stepped toward them and then stopped.
Riri waited.
Jenny came back one pace. “One more?”
Riri bent at once.
Jenny kissed her, quick and warm, one hand against Riri’s cheek. When she drew away, Riri felt the absence of that small hand immediately.
Jenny boarded.
She found a place near the door where the sword sleeve would not obstruct anyone. Riri remained on the platform. Through the window, Jenny looked almost ordinary now: dark coat, damp natural hair, tired face, one ridiculous padded sword propped beside her. The Sonja armour was hidden in the tote at her feet.
The doors chimed.
Jenny lifted her hand.
Riri lifted hers.
The train moved.
For several seconds Jenny remained visible through successive windows, then the tunnel took her.
Riri stood still after the platform emptied around her.
She was tired. Her knee had begun giving the deep warning ache that followed too many hours on concrete. Her flannel smelled faintly of convention air, rain and Jenny’s coffee from where Jenny had leaned against her under the awning. One pocket held only a single cable tie now.
Riri smiled.
On the train, Jenny sat when a seat opened and placed the tote between her boots. The sword rested upright against her knee. She took out her phone before the next station.
There was already a message.
Made it onto the right train?
Jenny’s smile widened.
Yes. Thank you for today.
The reply came before she had put the phone away.
Thank you too.
Nothing clever. Nothing performed.
Jenny read it twice anyway.
Across from her, a little boy stared at the sword sleeve. His father noticed and tried to redirect him. Jenny smiled at the child and shifted the sleeve slightly so the outline of the hilt was visible.
“Is that a sword?” he asked.
“It is.”
“Are you a superhero?”
Jenny considered the question seriously.
“No,” she said. “I was a warrior today.”
The child nodded, satisfied.
Jenny looked down at her hands.
One palm still remembered the coarse warmth of Riri’s flannel. Her fingertips remembered the close grain of buzzed hair at Riri’s temple from the last kiss. She did not turn the sensations into prophecy. Eternal optimism, as Jenny practiced it, had never meant demanding that the future obey her hopes. It meant allowing good things to be good while they existed, refusing to poison them in advance merely because loss was always possible.
Today had been good.
Tomorrow existed.
That was enough to make her happy.
Riri left the station two stops later and walked back toward her hotel through streets still wet from rain. She had spent the morning thinking that conventions were mostly interesting because people made things. Armour from plastic. Wings from hinges. swords from foam and paint. Whole impossible bodies from fabric, glue, patience and months of work.
She still thought that.
But what stayed with her most strongly was not the craftsmanship she had expected to admire. It was the accumulation of smaller acts she had not come looking for: Jenny turning an old cover into a new problem by defending its composition; Jenny seeing the snow-reddened fingers on an image Riri remembered from adolescence; Jenny saying a beautiful boot could also be useless; Jenny watching Riri’s hands closely enough to tell her what they did without making strength into threat.
Riri reached the hotel and stopped in the lobby while people moved around her toward elevators.
Her phone buzzed.
Jenny had sent a photograph.
It showed the repaired scale at her hip before she had removed the armour completely. The repair itself was invisible. Beneath the image Jenny had written only: Still holding.
Riri laughed aloud.
A woman waiting near the desk glanced over.
Riri typed back.
Told you.
Then, after a moment, she added: Sleep well, Sonja.
The answer came as she stepped into the elevator.
You too, Riri.
No teasing correction. No coy little performance about the name. Jenny received the affection exactly as it had been offered.
Jenny reached home later than she had planned and was grateful for the quiet waiting behind her door. She touched the mezuzah lightly as she entered, more habit than announcement, then stood in the narrow hall with the sword sleeve leaning against her leg and the tote dragging at one shoulder. For the first time all day there was no one looking at her. No camera, no child asking about the sword, no stranger admiring the armour, no Riri watching her with that steady concentration that had somehow never felt like being inspected. Jenny closed the door, locked it and smiled into the empty apartment.
She unpacked Sonja carefully. The boots came off first. She inspected the right heel, pleased to find only a pink patch of skin beneath the moleskin rather than a blister. The sword returned to its hooks. The bracers went onto a folded towel. She spread the scale pieces over the bed so no weight rested incorrectly overnight, then found the repaired section and turned it toward the lamp. Riri's work was inelegant exactly as promised. The hidden cable tie was cut square, the tape pressed firmly beneath the overlapping metal. It would need a proper repair before the next convention. It would also, Jenny suspected, have survived several more conventions exactly as it was.
She took the broken clip from the pouch.
For a while she held it in her palm. It was ordinary, worth almost nothing, a cheap little piece of hardware that had failed after doing its job for hours. Jenny opened the shallow wooden box where she kept ticket stubs, notes, small gifts and objects whose value depended entirely on memory. She placed the clip beside a museum token and an old brass button, then closed the lid.
In the bathroom she washed away the last of the convention makeup. Red pigment left the cloth in faint traces. Her own face returned gradually in the mirror: tired eyes, flattened hair, a tiny pressure mark where the wig cap had rested near one temple. Jenny brushed her teeth, changed into a soft nightshirt and went to the kitchen.
She wanted coffee. She did not make it. Even devotion had limits at that hour. Instead she warmed milk, added a little honey and sat at the table with both hands around the mug. Her phone lay beside it. She did not stare at the screen waiting for another message. Riri had said tomorrow. Jenny believed her. Trust did not require surveillance.
Still, when the screen lit once with an unrelated notification, Jenny looked immediately and laughed at herself.
She thought about Riri crouched at her waist with complete concentration, asking before touching the armour. She thought about the high counter at the convention and the pendant Riri could have taken down without thinking but had not. She thought about the first kiss, especially the pause before Riri's hand settled against her back. That pause had been almost nothing in duration. It had contained a great deal.
Jenny drank the warm milk slowly. The apartment around her held the ordinary remnants of her life: books aligned on the shelf, a dish waiting to be washed, tomorrow's mail stacked neatly beside the door. Sonja occupied one lower shelf in several mismatched volumes, old issues protected in sleeves, newer collections with their spines uncreased. Jenny looked toward them and smiled.
Riri had seen the feet first.
Jenny still thought the composition on the old stairway cover was worth the cheat. She also knew, now, that the back foot was trapped. Both things could remain true without either diminishing the other. She liked the thought enough to carry it with her when she rose, rinsed the mug and set it upside down to dry.
Before bed, Jenny checked her phone once more. She reread Riri's last message, not because its meaning was hidden but because it was pleasant. Then she set the alarm, placed the phone face down and turned off the light.
Tomorrow existed.
She slept easily.
Riri put the phone in her pocket and watched the floor numbers rise.
The convention pass still hung against her chest. She had forgotten to remove it. She lifted it, looked at the printed badge, then let it fall again.
She had gone because a programme promised old artwork, publishing history, costume work, writers, artists and a red-haired warrior who had followed her quietly through several decades of her life.
That had been enough reason to make the trip.
It was not the reason she would remember it.
Upstairs, Riri finally removed the convention pass and set it on the dresser beside her room key. She emptied her pockets automatically: coins, multitool, pencil, mint, the last cable tie. The objects made a small practical row beneath the lamp. She looked at the cable tie and thought of Jenny's delighted face, then laughed again, quieter this time. Her knee complained when she sat on the edge of the bed to pull off her boots. She rubbed it once, not dramatically, and stretched the leg until the ache settled.
The room was anonymous in the way hotel rooms were meant to be, but the day had followed her inside. A faint red thread from Jenny's wig clung to the shoulder of the flannel. Riri found it while folding the shirt. She held it between finger and thumb, absurdly bright against her skin, and placed it beside the pass rather than brushing it into the wastebasket.
She did not decide what that meant.
She knew only that tomorrow had coffee in it, Jenny would be there without armour, and Riri wanted to see what else became visible when neither of them had a warrior standing between them.
That anticipation felt steady rather than urgent, less like pursuit than recognition, and she trusted it enough to leave it alone overnight.