Cohost Sapphic September 2024 writing prompt: 05 — Girls who are magical
“Um,” Deedee says squeakily, clutching her drink, and the Occult Shieldmaidens, out of uniform but recognisable, look at her. She shifts from foot to foot. “Um you must hear this a lot but—”
“No, no, sure,” Shieldmaiden Ajji Majji la Tarajji says smoothly, taking out a Sharpie. “Do you have a poster or something you want signed—?”
“Ahaha,” Deedee says nervously. “No, I—”
“Cool, cool. You want a selfie? Just nudge up to Presto, there, we’ll get one with you in the middle—”
“No, uh, I—”
“We love meeting our fans,” Ajji Majji la Tarajji says with empty conviviality, smiling a plastic smile.
“I actually, uh — I actually just came to say — I’m not really—” Deedee pulls on a strand of her hair nervously. “I was in a bad place a few years ago, and — Alakazam — if I hadn’t....” She swallows, as Shieldmaiden Alakazam’s eyes slowly rise from her smartphone, widening as they do, the magical girl reflexively attempting to shrink in on herself to take up no space and go unnoticed. “I mean, you don’t know me, and I don’t — I don’t really know you. But I hadn’t found something to make me believe that it gets better—”
“Yeah,” Alakazam says, and smiles, more genuine for all that the eyes above it are distinctly not filled with happiness. “Yeah,” and she reaches out, gently shakes Deedee’s hand, and squashes rapidly back in on herself. “Glad you’re still here,” she says, heavy with sincerity, attention shrinking back toward her phone in an obviously necessary, habitual way.
“You, too,” Deedee says, and looks back only once on her way back across the bar to where she’s drinking alone, catching just a glimpse of Alakazam with her phone dropped in her lap, hands over her downturned face, Presto dropping a compassion-faced kiss on the top of her head.
She swallows the panicked urge to go back and apologise.
