"Not everything delicious is alarming, but almost everything alarming is delicious."

Stephana took another bite of pizza, savoring her wise words of wisdom.

"How long?" Peridot asked. They were so young.

"Zing," Athena nodded, finishing off her first slice.

"Zap." Stephana gently corrected -

Wait. Wait Wait Wait. Hold up, slow down.

They lived on the mountain. That was the woods. So they literally, legitimately, spent most of their lives in the woods. Huh. And they'd never eaten pizza before.

...

When Stephana said that initially, it was a joke. Like, she didn't actually expect them to - seriously? Actually raised in the goddamn woods?

So:

Magic was real. A man had been sniped less than an hour ago on the way to buy groceries, and was walking around like nothing happened, but only after dumping the entire city into a blizzard and declaring his undying love to the current Matriarch of the magic people, who was eating pizza, that Stephana ordered off of her royal dime, right across from her. Somewhere in this mess of events, she got a girl's phone number, and said girl doesn't seem to actively despise her after 10 seconds. And now, these two 14 year old scamps who came out of nowhere just admitted to literally living in the woods for the majority of their lives, and this was their first time eating pizza.

Stephana stared into the reality that dared to dump this nonsensical fuckery of events in front of her.

"Hey BT?" She asked. "You ever wonder why we're here?"

( Ken?)

Same boat, BT. Same boat. Although Stephana was kind of expecting an answer.

"Just so much weird stuff happening lately." She mentioned as explanation. "Brings out the existentialist in me. Like, what are we here for? What are we gonna do with the time we have? What would have happened if I got on the bus to Portland instead of the bus to Seattle?"

If you got on the bus to Portland you would be drunk or high right now.

“Fate is weird,” Athena shrugged. 

"Oh? Who were...uh, who were your parents?" Peridot asked.

Frost sighed "I guess you're right" He paused as he said "I think after the Blizzard she might think my ideas are...dumb. I...have one though. There's a pattern, we're still moving more and more north. Maybe instead of that...we should head to Midwest, where the weather is erradic, take it from the local, and they have a big city"

Stephana slid across the room, awkwardly reaching her arm past the ongoing conversation to snatch another piece of pizza before returning to the cool wall for cool people.

"You believe in fate?"

Athena bit her lip, thinking. “I mean, kinda yeah? There’s no other reason I can think of for why I’m still alive.”

“Oh..really? So they finally got together huh?” Peridot asked softly. She seemed sad for a moment, looking at the girls. “Well, they did good by you two, that I can see.”

Stephana turned to stare at her.

Alright. She's clearly...normal people don't learn to fight. Despite the fact that nobody is normal - something's up. Ladies like her don't learn to swing knives around at high speeds for kicks.

Actually Stephana would totally do it for kicks, holy shit. She was probably not gonna die for a few hundred years, so she had plenty of time! Holy shit this was a game changer! How many other useless tricks could she learn in a hundred years? She could learn to skateboard and do card tricks and

Focus Focus Focus

So she probably shouldn't go right out and tackle it. Let the lady come to her conclusions on her own time. No pressure, easy hanging. It was how Stephana handled all her relationships.

So no matter how much she wanted to ask what happened, she wasn't going to.

"I mean," Stephana spun her free hand in a circle, "I think it's just my dumbass decisions behind whatever happens to me. Like, nobody could have planned this out. Nobody. I could have been on a bus to Portland if I didn't like Salmon more than I liked Hipsters."

Her eyes widened as Peridot spoke of her parents like never before. Ellie knew that back then that it was a better life, but not to the extent of knowing the royalty. "Oh," she mustered out, taking in the words. They knew the princess, they were close to one another. And now...

Abigail, on the other hand, had lost it at the mention of her parents. She furiously wiped away the tears with the back of her hands.