x008|
There had been a lot of time spent thinking.
It was cold. At times she could almost forget just how much, but then she would move. A slight shift of her leg against the frozen bench, a brief intake of air. The icy chill would fill her lungs and Vianca would wonder if it was truly as cold as it felt there in her chest, or if it merely felt that way because plants were so sensitive to it.
She was a plant.
It was something that she had never forgotten. Except it became easy to place the fact aside, for others to forget or to never know in the first place. That was alright. She was trying to be more like them, after all. Slowly, very slowly, she was trying to understand. What drove people to laugh? To cry? To be all the things that they could be? Was it possible to be more than just a shadow, she had wondered. Was it alright if she did those things too?
No.
She did something wrong. She crossed a line. Someone had saw it fit to provide her a reminder, in case she really had forgotten. It must have been obvious then, that she was not a person. Simply a sham. A masquerade. A failure.
She was a plant. A pikmin.
… But was she really? A pikmin was not meant to ask for much. A pikmin helped another. All she had really wanted was to keep her sisters safe. Happy. But one by one, each had gone. Vianca brushed her fingers against the folded slip of paper in her pocket. She had read it so many times, she didn't have to look at it anymore to recall the words written there. If Ionia had felt for so long that she was no longer a sister…
Ionia had said to not be very sad, but the tears fell hot on her cheeks despite everything. The warm liquid barely registered, simply noted down as one more instance of how she had done something wrong. She had not listened. She had long since failed a leader. She had failed her sister. A part of her, somewhere, had expected something when she should have asked for nothing. How could she still call herself a pikmin?
She was not a person.
She was not a pikmin.
The brief drops of warmth ebbed back away to the cold. It was easier to think. It was better not to pretend. There was no need to try and be something that she wasn't. She had gotten by just fine as a shadow. Even that was perhaps too much. Vianca curled her fingers around the biting cold of the bench, the freezing touch acting as some sort of confirmation.
It would be far more suitable to be nothing at all.
-------
[The only reason that Vianca still gave out the few presents she did was because they had been ready to hand out before the statue fiasco, and it would have been a waste to let them go unattended. Otherwise, no one would have gotten anything.]
Bowser: Hello Mr. Etiquette teacher, you get… nothing extraordinary. It is a set of 12 fairly nice looking cloth napkins and holders that have a tortoise design to them. But while they are "fairly nice" by some standards, they are still quite average overall.
Raikou: … A small electric train set. It is not nearly as impressive as your other one, but it might suffice for the room.
Rhys: Hot water bottles, a warm blanket, and an aloe plant.
EVA: A box that looks much like that, though it has a lock and key and a lack of a drawer. There does not immediately appear to be anything inside, but there is a tray that lifts out. Underneath it, there is a stack of dated envelopes addressed to EVA with postage, but none of them have actual addresses on them. The oldest is from September 2nd, 2009, while the newest was October 3rd, 2010.
There was also a package with Ionia's name on it that was just waiting for her address.
[Everyone that had gotten her something for whatever reason got a (very concise and impartial sounding) thank you note in return.]