#bellani

"um- h-happy valentines day"

aaaalways late..but i did it! 😅

@ask-waiter-bellamy 🧡💙

Belle had, objectively, had a rough few months. What with her best friend getting kidnapped and his sister falling apart and, oh yeah, she’d been turned into a bird at one point and all of it had been a bit of a mess.

But, things were looking up. Hades was home, and Seph was happy and she was happy and while things weren’t exactly back to normal, they were much, much better than they had been. And Belle was very good at clinging to that and trying to ignore the ugly of it all for just a little while. Just enough to let herself breathe. 

There was the matter of rent being raised and Hades being back adding a very slight additional cost to her overall living expenses--but that was fine. It was fine. She was sure of it. She’d make sure of it. 

And, now that her own crisis was being dealt with, she could turn her attention to another one that had been brewing right under her nose for a long time...and that was Nani. 

Sweet Nani, who had a bit of fire to her and who loved books and was quite too but more chatty and definitely more social than Belle. Belle liked her very much, could even see herself becoming good friends with the other woman, but she didn’t know much about her and she’d been too wrapped up and sad in her own thoughts to...really pay much attention, honestly.

Though, to be fair, she did notice and she just--didn’t know how to approach it. Noticed the tired look in Nani’s eyes and how she sometimes moved a bit sluggishly or downed the coffee that Belle got for them in the mornings from Hatter’s (well, coffee for Nani and tea for her). It had just...taken her a little while to gather the courage to say something about it.

She had that now and she sat at the front desk, twisting her fingers together, waiting for Nani to enter. When the bell chimed and it was Nani who appeared in the doorway, Belle smiled nervously and practically shoved the coffee at the other woman.

“Nani! Good morning! I, uhm,” she blushed, “there’s something I need to talk with you about if you’ll--come this way...” Belle took her tea and wrapped both her hands around it before turning and wandering farther into the stacks of books, leaving Persephone to man the front.  

She had lasted just over two weeks in the acolyte program before they reassigned her with a very diplomatically worded letter to her aunt.

It had been a week longer than Kharris had expected to last. Bellani had expected three days would have been sufficient, but she forgot how forgiving the priests could be. How they desperately tried to be understanding and Respectful of a young girl’s need for freedom. How Tenacious they had been in trying to rope her into meditations and lectures and vigils. And how Compassionately they could kick her out the door.

Early childhood was probably sharing stolen candy with Keiran before Hallow’s End.