We're the youngest generation of Prices. …You'd be the next generation…

Nina had done a pretty good job bothering Duke on Sunday and losing herself in flying and attempts at picking locks (she could manage basic ones as a pony—it was a victory that only she really cared about) and then on Monday she'd thrown herself headlong into moping about the lack of wings.

(Which, being clear, was a huge tragedy.)

But by the time Tuesday rolled around, Miss Verity's words, which had stuck and lingered and rolled around in the back of her head had left her sleepless and anxious in ways she wasn't quite sure how to face head on.

That was how she wound up at her shop, before the wee hours of the morning really got going, well before dawn.

Like.

She'd been an orphan. Then she'd gotten herself adopted. She loved Prompto fiercely, wildly, unreasonably (anything that hurt him was going to get a bookbelt to the face and she didn't know if he realized just what that meant) but…

But…

Somewhere along the line, Liam's fake-dadness had become… less and less fake until she was pretty sure that it was only fake now because how could you adopt someone already adopted and because… well… once you said those words, and meant them, how could you come back from it?

Nina was… pretty sure he was her dad. Like, her actual dad. The one that came running when she was scared and who cheered her on when she had a brilliant idea and who smiled just because she, like, existed. And that was wildly frightening to her, something she teetered over a precipice of, because what if he changed his mind? What if she did? What if it—

Wasn't real?

Better to not say and just love and hope and twist herself into knots about it because she wanted him to be her dad but she didn't want to lose Prompto and wasn't it selfish to want both? Wasn't it being unbearably, impossibly greedy?

Then, Miss Verity just cutting through all the complications with her easy acceptance of the fact that, somehow, someway, she was family.

You'd be the next generation.

And, sure, they'd been talking about ghosts and loopholes and…

"Aunt Mary," she said, trying out how it sounded, said aloud. It sounded pretty nice. It wasn't scary to say since, like, people called people Aunts and Uncles all the time that they weren't related to. It was fine.

"Dad." That sounded nicer, though her cheeks flamed at saying it, embarrassed even though no one was there to hear her.

"Mom?" That one was uncertain, suiting the way she felt about it. She really didn't know Miss Verity that well. Miss Verity hadn't, didn't, belong to that title, aside from as a person adjacent to Liam and that… well… that wasn't enough.

She already had one adoptive mother where it was transactional, and she didn't think Miss Verity would like her calling her mom—unless Nina meant it. (Or if they were undercover, but that was different. The same rules didn't apply.)

But it was fun to imagine, in the quiet empty hours as she cleaned and thought and wondered.

By the time the shop was open, the place was sparkling clean and Nina was reading in one of the squashy, comfortable chairs at the front.

I love you, she texted Prompto, five minutes before she knew his alarm was supposed to go off. She didn't know if he'd answer. He was so busy these days, but she hoped it made him smile anyway.

Then she went back to her tea and her books and the ghosts of thoughts that plagued her.

The Bookbelt is Open.

[That Nina was at the shop early and cleaning is FB, what she was saying is NFB, please!]