#mtgship

The plaza was full of ravnicans from every guild, clearing out the debris and re-building the shattered structures that the eternals had razed. Gruul kronches and Orzhov thrulls worked side-by-side to haul away wagons of rubble. Rakdos and Golgari volunteers had brought in heaps of food, and were preparing meals for wounded and the workers alike under the direction of a well-dressed imp. Boros angels and Dimir spies surveyed the buildings, looking for potential dangers to the salvage crews.

And among all the native citizens, planeswalkers lent their myriad talents to the city's recovery.

"Heads up!"

Nissa turned to see two streams of flame light up yet another neatly-stacked heap of eternals. Samut was still working diligently at gathering her fallen comrades for respectful disposal, with Chandra and Jaya helping her to carry and immolate the metal-plated warriors.

Chandra turned and caught Nissa's eye from halfway across the plaza. Nissa turned away quickly, blushing.

I should go and talk to her, Nissa thought. I should… she took a step toward across the plaza and stopped short, grasping for words in her mind.

What are you supposed to say to someone after 'I love you?' What is there to say?

So she turned and carried her chunk of rubble determinedly to the other side of the plaza. Angrath, the minotaur with the burning chains, and Arlinn Kord, the older human woman who had been a wolf for the better part of Bolas' invasion, were working together to unearth the remains of the chambers of the Guildpact. Jace shifted sadly through the remains of his library a few feet away. Niv Mizzet lay sprawled nearby, in conversation with Teferi, one of the new gatewatch members. The dragon didn’t seem like the merry type, but whatever Teferi had just said made Niv-Mizzet chuckle.

"LESS TALKING, MORE ELBOW GREASE, WINDBAGS!"

Angrath stalked past the dragon and the time-mage, hauling a massive slab of stone and metal with his chains. Arlinn walked alongside him, another large rock cradled in her arms.  "ARE YOU JUST GONNA LET US OLD-TIMERS MOVE ALL THIS ROCK??"

Niv-Mizzet sniffed. "I am millennia-old, little planeswalker. Your years pale in comparison to my own."

"BAH! DID YOUR YEARS LEAVE YOU USELESS AS WELL AS BORING?"

Teferi shrugged "Well, I've only got the one millennia under my belt, so I guess that makes me a spring chicken." He waved his staff and sped up several of the Azorius and Izzet constructs that were sifting through the rubble. This seemed to shame Niv-Mizzet at least a degree, and he started scooping up rocks.

"HARD WORK WILL KEEP YOU YOUNG, DRAGON!" Angrath laughed as he hauled his own burden to the edge of the plaza and loaded it onto a wagon. Nissa threw her boulder right behind his, and the minotaur gave her an approving nod.

"Now THAT'S the way we get work done!" He offered Nissa a rough handshake.

"You…you certainly don't have any trouble letting everyone know what's on your mind," Nissa observed.

"MUCH easier to get the job done that way, don't you think?" Even when he wasn't roaring, Angrath roared. "I've been watching you all move stones off that tree all day. You ought to TELL them to let YOU take care of it."

"I thought of just doing that." Nissa walked with Angrath back toward the chamber building. "But that tree…it's important to them. Sacred…I think I need to respect their feelings on the matter."

Angrath snorted, almost like a laugh, but nodded in agreement. "Feelings, well, there's a TIME and a PLACE to respect those, and if it's all the same to them…" he shrugged.

"We have time now. In a crisis, I wouldn't bother asking."

"HAH!" Angrath grinned, and wrapped his chain around another boulder. "An elf of action, huh?"

"Yes." Nissa knelt and lifted a flat slab of stone as tall as she was. "When it comes to, well…just acting." She looked up at Angrath from under the stone. "How do you do it so easily? Talk with all of them like that, I mean."

Angrath was silent a moment, pursing his lips as best as someone with a bull's head could purse their lips.

"I've seen many worlds, and I suppose I'm lucky to come from one where we speak our minds freely. It's an honest way to live. When I'm HAPPY, I want to share my JOY. When my daughters make me PROUD, I want them to know how important they are, and how much I CHERISH them. If I have a quarrel with my neighbor, I will tell them directly so that we can quickly put the quarrel to bed." He laughed, a loud, boisterous sound.

Nissa nodded, slowly. "And what about the times when you don't know if your feelings are welcome? When…when the feelings you have…you don't know if you can put a voice to them? Isn't that selfish, to say something badly and hurt the other person?"

"It's all practice." Angrath looked up, almost pensive. "And sometimes…well, if you aren't a little selfish in making your feelings known, then they just sit in your belly like a lead weight. You have to say things badly before you get good at saying them well." He chucked his boulder onto the wagon and sat down on a fallen column. "But you sound like you have something you need to say."

"There…there's a girl." Nissa hefted the slab onto the wagon and sat down next to Angrath. "I had…months to say something to her. My…my feelings that is."

"Anger?"

"Oh…no, nothing like that."

"Irritation? Did she make a dinosaur stand on your chest?"

"I…no, it's…it's…" Nissa was wringing her hands together in her lap. "It's, um. It's l…l…"

"Love?"

Nissa's ears were burning. "Y…yes."

Angrath nodded. "That's a tricky one."

"Isn't it?" Nissa's voice rose. "You meet this…this person and they make you feel something you've never felt your whole life. You can't even put a finger on it and by the time you do it feels too late to say something, and you start to doubt what it even is you feel, and then you…you just self-destruct emotionally at the first opportunity and storm off and…and…"

"Ah." Angrath laughed, a mercifully discreet one this time. "I wondered why the red one was looking at you so much."

Nissa realized belatedly that she had been staring straight at Chandra from across the Plaza for the past minute. Her hands gripped her knees and she looked straight down at her lap.

"Have you told her all that? It might not have been poetry, but it was honest. Honesty beats poetry any day."

"This is…the first time I've seen her since I left."

"And how have things been since?"

"We had…we had a moment. She said she loved me, and I know that she meant that. With all her heart. I…I could never say it before but I realized that if Bolas' plan had worked…I would never have had the chance to say it. So I did."

"That's PERFECT, then!" Angrath raised a hand as if to clap Nissa on the back, then lowered the hand, and raised an eyebrow instead. "Isn't it?"

"I…it felt right, but in the context of our conversation…" Nissa bit her lip, trying to find the right words. "…We had been discussing platonic love right before, so really…she might not have realized what I meant by it, so I can't really say it was a satisfactory conversation."

"Say it again. Don't leave any room for doubt."

"But…" Nissa paused, grasping again for words. She looked up, straight at Chandra. "…but what if I'm wrong? What if I've been imagining it all in my head and she doesn't want to be my friend after this?"

"It's the difference between saying how you feel and expecting people to act how you want them." Angrath dusted off his trousers and stood. "You can do the first without demanding the second. You said you believed her? Believe in yourself a little bit too, huh?"

"I suppose that's true." Nissa tore her eyes away from Chandra and smiled. "Thank you. I think that helps."

"You don't have to do things the way I do them. Not everyone has the chops I've got." Angrath flexed a forearm and grinned. "Tell her in a moment alone, if it suits you. Shout it from the city square if that's the way you feel about her. But don't think your feelings don't matter enough to speak them aloud. That's no way to live."

And then he was striding off, swinging his arms and cursing up at Niv-Mizzet again.

Nissa let out a long breath, and closed her eyes. Her heartbeat was returning to normal. Her face cooling.

Think what you feel, then say what you feel.

She took in another breath, slowly, filling her lungs.

You love Chandra. More than a friend. More than a teammate.

She opened her eyes.

How will you say it?

"Hey Nissa!" Chandra was running toward her, vaulting over rubble and cracks in the plaza. Something trailing steam balanced on her upturned palm. Her smile. Her hair. Her fire…Nissa had never thought much of fire, but now she couldn't imagine life without it.

"The zombie-food is actually pretty good!" Chandra plopped down next to Nissa and offered a steaming plate of spicy-sweet-smelling food. "I uh…wasn't sure what you'd want so I got a little bit of everything."

Nissa looked at the plate, than at the woman in front of her. She took another deep breath.

Here we go.