#boane

Because sure, you figured out how to be friendly, how to ask personal questions delicately and follow up and express sympathetic grief or amusement. Lot of good advice on that online. But you're honestly still pretty quiet compared to, to... someone like Tosen Jordan, for one example of many. You don't like to express your opinion too loudly. Don't like a fuss. It's something you admire in Pokke, but also something you wish she would tamp down sometimes. She gets into so much trouble. It's usually you to help her out of it -- or prevent it when she lets you. (Does she have to make everyone's problems her problems? At least you stick to making *her* problems your problems, but then, since she..? ugh.)

Cafe and Tachyon are calm by comparison. But they still need you sometimes! They don't ask. Not ever. Not like Pokke. You try and step up when they clearly should be asking. You treasure the memories: Cafe's face the first time you made her coffee for her, Tachyon's shocked laughter when you offered to share your notes with her for a make up exam. You treasure those moments when you feel like something important in their lives. Irreplaceable.

But it's those moments when you aren't helping that it's impossible to be close to them. All so fantastic, burning bright with potential. So *themselves.* And what are you? Just a girl who can't catch up. Who laughs at the right time. Who's there when you need her. But that's not anything special. It's a skill anyone can learn.

Sometimes, late at night, wrapped in blankets and between five to seven pillows, you imagine a friend who needs nothing from you. She bakes, calls her mother on weekends. She texts you at 2AM about nothing.