Edie’s warm hands wrapped around her bicep and helped her climb out of her pile of feathers and onto her knees. Instinctively, Vere wrapped her wings around herself to try to restore some of her body heat. Since Edie was crouched so close to her, she was pulled into Vere’s feathery cloak.

“What happened?” Edie asked, her voice soft and urgent. She reached under the edge of Vere’s wing and nudged her balcony door closed. Edie was already out of her work clotheace wiped free of makeup and dewy with her evening moisturizers, her hair up in a messy bun and bound with a black bandana. Vere’s copper wings reflected in the lenses of her glasses like flickering fire.

“S-Sorry,” stammered Vere with a breathless laugh. “I’m… I’m okay. Just, I think I panicked a bit?”

Edie nodded, quiet and waiting for more. She reached up and brushed her hand lightly over Vere’s frizzy curls before wiping her palm on her sweatpants.

“I tried to go to Ripley’s game night—”

“Oh!” Edie’s cheeks dimpled with a smile. “Proud of you.”

Vere continued, “—But there was nobody else there. And Ripley, they…” She hesitated, shifting off her knees and leaning against the foot of Edie’s bed.

She was trying to decide how many of the nuances about Ripley’s decision Edie would be able to grasp. Edie had an extraordinary knowledge of valkyrie practices thanks to living as a ward of VADR from ages 12 to 18. But the valkyrie code, the assumptions they lived by, which Ripley was violating… would they make sense to her?

While Vere dug her fingers into the pile of curls on top of her head, Edie slowly got up from the floor and moved to sit on her plush ruby loveseat opposite her bed. Her bedroom was all jewel tones, velvet, and black accents. Vere would never tell her how truly vampiric she thought Edie’s aesthetic was, because it fit Edie well anyway. That had been the best part of these last six years since Edie had moved out of VADR. She had been able to find herself and settle into her identity.

“Vere?” Edie prompted, hugging a pillow. Vere was almost sad that the tufted pillow covered Edie’s soft tummy rolls, which were emphasized by the form-fitting camisole Edie was relaxing in. Vere felt like a sugary dessert she’d been enjoying had been snatched out of her mouth.

Edie patted the couch next to her. “C’mere. Take a minute to calm down if you need to. I don’t have anywhere to be.”

Vere climbed off the floor. Edie had had the couch pulled six inches away from the wall ever since she moved in, knowing that was the best way to set up furniture so Vere had somewhere to let her wings settle. Still, the small seat with two thick women on it meant that their legs were pressed together when Vere sat down.

“Ripley is leaving,” she said tonelessly. 

Edie blinked hard, frozen, as if she hadn’t heard her. Then her expression contorted. “Say again? Leaving?”

“Their room was packed up. They said they’re leaving tonight. I was the only person they told. They’re just going to be gone by tomorrow and…” She shrugged, balling her hands into fists. “And then what? Agrippa’s just going to let them disgrace her while they go off and—and what? Pretend like they’re not a valkyrie? What… what are they supposed to do besides—this?” She jerked her thumb at VADR.

Edie’s cherry-red lips were slightly parted as she gazed off into the distance. Maybe Vere was wrong to have doubted her friend’s grasp of these kind of nuances. Maybe Edie very much understood how fucked up it was that Ripley was abandoning VADR.

“Wow, that’s pretty cool,” Edie said, and Vere’s stomach dropped through the floor.

She was too stunned by the reply to speak right away. Too gobsmacked that her hopes had been so promptly proven wrong.

Vere swallowed hard and said with a crack in her voice, “I’m sorry, but I’m not sure how it’s pretty cool that Ripley is gonna leave the only home they’ve ever known and potentially ruin their life while making themself friendless and ostracized.”

Edie frowned. Always needing to fidget, especially when Vere was upset, she picked up a squishy stress ball that was already shoved into the couch cushion. “So that’s what’s happened to the other valkyries that have left VADR?”

Vere shook her head slightly. “I’ve never known anyone else.”

“Then how do you know it’s gonna go badly?” Edie raised her eyebrows in time with two firm squeezes of the stress ball, the image of which was so silly that Vere groaned and snatched it out of her hand.

“I really did go into panic mode, didn’t I?” Vere squeezed the cool gelatinous ball between her hands, gentler than usual since she’d popped five or six of Edie’s stress balls in the last three months. She had actually turned on a repeat transaction to transfer money to Edie every month that she’d called the Fidget Fund.

“Well, they don’t call it fight or flight for nothing…”

“Shut up,” groaned Vere.

Edie giggled. “Sorry, sorry. But yeah. You probably were. That’s not to say that you’re wrong. But maybe you can hold off on assuming disaster before it happens.”

“Yeah, but if I, as their friend, am freaking out—” Vere ducked her head, scratching her cheek bashfully, “—and may or may not have called them an idiot before I flew off…”

“Vere!” exclaimed Edie scornfully.

Vere felt her cheeks heat up with embarrassment. Her temper flaring in her final moments with Ripley would haunt her. With a slight shake of her head, she finished her thought. “If someone close to them like me freaked out, though, think of how Agrippa’s gonna react.”

“Yeah, you’re right about that.” Edie’s expression pinched like she smelled something rotten. It was her signature Agrippa face. “You’ll stick up for them, right?”

She frowned. “I’ll do what I can. But you know Agrippa.” She tossed the ball back to Edie, ignoring Edie’s disappointed frown. “There was one confusing thing Ripley said though.”

“Okay.” Edie stood up from the couch, and Vere’s gaze naturally drifted toward all her favorite curves on her friend’s body, but she hardly noticed herself do it. Of course she admired Edie.

“Ripley said that VADR isn’t safe for ‘people like us’. What kind of people am I?”

Edie frowned. “Like, as in a Stromgaard?”

“I don’t think so. Ripley’s not from a remarkable family.”

Edie hummed curiously. She picked up her phone, tapped at it a few times, and then turned it toward Vere with the app for their favorite pizza delivery pulled up.

“Oh, fuck yes.” Vere tapped through to add their favorite toppings to a large pizza that they would not be sharing with her. “Don’t forget the cinnamon sticks this time though. With buffalo sauce.”

“I let you get those dessert sticks one time with your gross savory sauce,” exclaimed Edie with outrage, “and it will never happen again.”

Vere sighed mournfully and waved her off.

Edie sobered as she looked back at her phone, tapping for a few seconds before she finally glanced back up at Vere. “Did you have a guess, about what they meant?”

Vere nodded slowly. But she’d never talked about it with anyone. She’d never even really admitted any of it to Ripley. They’d just figured it out and she hadn’t denied it.

Edie’s eyebrows rose as she stared at Vere, silent but not looking overly patient.

“Um.” Vere’s voice came out as more sigh than word, her anxiety making her chest feel tight. It was the one thing she both loved and hated most about Edie. When she was working, or when she was with her sisters, she didn’t give herself space to be anxious. She stayed busy, she faked a smile, and she allowed her size to make her silence feel stoic rather than nervous. All of her walls crumbled as soon as she was with her friend. Which meant that she felt everything when she was with Edie. Which sort of sucked. But in a good way. Sort of.

Edie’s posture changed and a crease appeared between her eyebrows. She set her phone back on her bed and stepped closer.

“Qu… Queer valkyries.” Vere said it so quietly that Edie cocked her head and moved closer. Staring at her lap, Vere folded her hands tightly together and blurted, “Queer valkyries!”

“Queer?” Edie’s voice softened, rising at the end. “Vere, is that how you identify?”

Vere looked up. Now that she’d started admitting it aloud, her confidence grew. She sat a little straighter. “I don’t think I’m a woman, Edie. I don’t think I want to be seen as one. I don’t want to be a man—”

“Gross,” they both said together.

“—but I think… I’m nonbinary.”

Edie’s eyes got a little glassy. Her chest rose with a deep breath. “Sounds good to me,” she said with a warm smile.

Vere’s heart was pounding so hard that it was making her nauseous. She added uneasily, “But I don’t want my entire identity to be a battle. The valkyries were horrible to Ripley when they came out—and Agrippa was the worst of all. I don’t want to go through all that. So I’m not sure I’m ready to come out yet.”

“Whatever you want. But you’ll be nonbinary to me. They/them pronouns?” Edie sat back down next to Vere, comfortable as ever, evidently unfazed by Vere’s news. It made sense: what difference did a label make to the person who knew Vere better than anyone else, even her own family?

Vere swallowed, smiling weakly. They were still thinking about Ripley, about the last insults they pitched at their friend. It made the euphoria of Edie’s offer feel bittersweet. They leaned their head down and rested it on Edie’s shoulder. “Sure. Let’s try.”