Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses

[Emprexx Plush]

((Abby Floyd Continued From Involvement))

There was a lot to be said for things like the Kings James Version of the Bible. The rich, flowing language, if a little hard to read, had a sense of grandeur and reverence to it that tickled her and made the whole thing feel more alive and steeped in history and myth. That was part of the problem, though: it made God and His message distant to her, as pretty as it was, like a time-lost text she was just happening to glance at through a little bit of luck and spitshine. As fun as the language was, she didn't like that.

That's why she was unwinding from the long day with her dog-eared copy of The Message, a straight-shooting translation that dropped some floweriness and poise to make sure that the language was 110% clear and relatable for a modern reader. Some of the language was a touch out of her liking, no hemming about that, but it was clear as crystal and that was what was important. It helped the idea of religion stay fresh, close, and most importantly interpretive. It reminded her that despite all the airs, as it says, "God means what he says. What he says goes. His powerful Word is sharp as a surgeon's scalpel, cutting through everything, whether doubt or defense, laying us open to listen and obey. Nothing and no one is impervious to God's Word. We can't get away from it-no matter what." Hebrews 4:12.

It was a pretty day for steeping the old brain in the Word, she reckoned, though she wouldn't mind some company. The green grass and sparkling sun was inviting everyone to come out and see nature's splendor in all its glory, and she'd love to share it with someone. It'd help keep her mind off poor Shelley.

[Cicada]

((Irene Djezari continued from Airline Food))

Irene's thoughts ran, wanting for gold. Webber's Tolstoy essay. She'd left most of the relevant papers, the tickets to her runaway mental train, somewhere in the luminiferous aether. That was to say, she had no idea. Maybe in a pile in the girl's locker room office, maybe at home half smothered by her own tie-dye bed sheets. But her mind had an overpopulation of ideas anyways:

Compare and contrast the style of realism. The digital tone death knell of the archaic and classic, the high-brown nature of man brought with earth shattering finality into the dirt where she belonged. The last and greatest work of an era, at least according to old dead white people(TM). Irene was inclined to agree on the merit of the sheer scale of the work alone, but modern work was... well, more modern. Yung Leo's diction fell just slyly short of the sort of drabble that pretentious teen and no less pretentious post-modernist enjoyed. It was too clean, too pure... Something... Something...

Uh, well. The thoughts were all at least decent.

Sure most of them weren't exactly airtight enough to pass for a proper literary analysis-slash-criticism. But hey, she was going to forget most of them by the time she sat down to actually bang out the essay. She'd have plenty of time to thresh the wheat from the chaff then. Oh. Maybe a biographical element, touch on the actual author. Actual death of Tolstoy sometime in the early 20th century aside Irene refused to believe that he was really dead in the context of her thoughts on his massive tome. DOTA be damned. Only LOL was acceptable. If she recalled correctly Mrs. Webber had mentioned that had some sort of spiritual awakening later in his life, developed a profound form of contrarian Christian canon...

Speaking of Christian canon.

She could tell this book was related to The Bible because it had the words 'The Bible' on it in block lettering. Irene regarded it's typeface neutrally, her eyes laminated with glaze as she stared straight through the many pages worth of 'Word' of god. Religion was something she considered herself on the fence about. Another thing that had been dirtied, brought to earth by the last century's worth of circular progress. Her brain was too modern to waste the time. There was another face though, and that one Irene regarded more warmly, a short fuse of a smile igniting her face. Not the most familiar face but Irene was able to at least dredge up a name from history almost as ancient as the periods they were each studying.

"Hi Abby. Studying?" Sans further progression of their conversation Irene sat herself and her behind on the sun-kissed grass, nearly right up against to the other girl. Warm like a bed, she liked that. She wasn't inclined to relax, in the presence-slash-pseudo-personal-space of a relative stranger. She'd probably want to get up in a few anyways, in a spastic fit fueled by arbitrary energy.

[Emprexx Plush]

Don't bad-mouth each other, friends. It's God's Word, his Message, his Royal Rule, that takes a beating in that kind of talk. You're supposed to be honoring the Message, not writing graffiti all over it. God is in charge of deciding human destiny. Who do you think you are to meddle in the destiny of others? James 4:11-12. James was an interesting book, in Abby's opinion. A little hairy when it came down to who James really was, if he even wrote part or all of the book, or when it was written. That didn't matter all that much to her, though. The Word of God was a conversation, no matter who delivered it, and everyone was having a different chat if they were listening right. Who started, when, and exactly what words they used didn't matter that much in the end.

There was probably a reason she ran across this particular verse today. There usually was. She just couldn't put her finger on it yet. Maybe she should talk to Granny about it when she got home, or see if she could find one of her church friends. There were a few things weighing on her mind right now, but she didn't see how it fit into any of them right off the top of her head. If it was important, though, the Lord would find a way to get it through her head sooner or later!

Irene popped up out of nowhere, giving Abby a bit of a start. She had a look in her eyes that said her mind was working like a race horse, which brought a grin to her face. "Hey, Irene! Nope," she said as she tapped the page, "just having a little heart to heart. What're you up to today, hun?"

[Cicada]

If Irene's mind was a race horse she wasn't exactly winning folks big bucks anytime soon. Rather she was the embodiment of discombobulation that sputtered out of the gate and ran itself in a circle with both legs too short. Already she was weighing a bevy of concluding sentences broadly describing the historical significance of Tolstoy's Europe. Sans the necessary evidence contrived to produce such conclusions. Finished before she even started, and that was probably not an innuendo. And even those conclusions neatly wrapped themselves up, all points neatly made, dropped, forgotten. In her mind's eye Irene had sported the briefest of fives on the AP exam. And then she was briefly appraising nutmeg locks and piercings as she considered Miss Floyd in all her modest glory borne of god, or whatever.

"Heart to heart? Aw yeah, I getcha," Irene said emphatically, with an unwarranted sage nod. "I talk to my books too, sometimes I just gotta feel them out the verbal way." It was historically, empirically, canonically proven: god and some half of Cochise had borne witness. Half whispers, nigh possessed, speaking in eldritch tones of covalent bonding and London Dispersion forces. I see London, I see France. Irene promptly adjusted her legs, reminded briefly of the inconvenience of skirt pieces. Press that down flat, there we go. "What exactly are you reading?" Irene was tempted to peer despite the awkward positioning. She gave into said temptation, and the next second she was hovering yet closer, trying to steal a glance over Abby's shoulder. Locks of Irene's hair tried to drape themselves over her poor victim's shoulder.

"And I'm not up to much, just mentally prepping for the usual after school crawl." This for Irene being a variable combination of baseball and then various forms of wasting away her youth. "You too, I bet? I see you around so much, I swear you must be supes busy."

[Emprexx Plush]

"Oh, just James," she said idly as Irene perched over her shoulder, "I'm not scratching for anything particular today, just seeing what the good Lord has to say." Abby had no clue if Irene was particularly religious or not, but most folks around Kingman would probably pick up what she meant. Her smile turned playful as she raised her eyebrow slightly. "So far he's not too talkative, but I got my ears put on the wrong way 'round this morning."

Some people might object to the intrusion of personal space, but Abby wasn't one of them. She liked being close to folks, and Irene had never done anything to rub her the wrong way, so she was free to get as cozy as she liked. With a round finger, she traced along the verse she'd just been reading. "Lots of talk about not sassing or undermining folks for spite, mind, but I can't think of anybody I'm lookin' to badmouth?" Shelley's parents and the nasty thoughts she'd been biting back about them drifted across her mind, causing her to grimace. "Not anybody He's not already got an earful marked for someday, leastways."

She nodded when Irene mentioned her busy lifestyle. "Well, the family and the shelter and the clinic all keep me hopping in their own way, it's true, but it's the kind of busy I like to be caught up in. There's nothing quite like easing somebody else's struggle...even if they can't do much more than purr and rub your hand to give thanks," she said with a chuckle. "I'm sure I don't have to tell you none of that, though. You've always seemed like the kind of gal with a heart for others."

[Cicada]

"James?" One syllable betrayed Irene's confusion as she considered the possibilities. James Watson? James Franco? Irene wasn't even sure where that second name came from, save the barest twitch of trigger-finger inklings that it had something to do with things Asimah and Mom possibly watched. Arbitrarily, off the top of her head... The King's James Bible. The James Bible of the King. Made enough sense for Irene to go forward on that assumption. The hypothesis was lent further credence by the good 'Lord' bit. "Man, that one took me a bit." Irene could have played off her noteworthy pause there any number of ways but she'd already blurted out the truth. Dammit. At least she now had a shoulder to cry on, Abby being so kind as to provide one. She even offered a smile, which was happily returned. Irene liked cuddling with other girls in a platonic sense, it reminded her of the times when she could snuggle with sis without feeling all kinds of uncomfortable and embarrassed. She drew closer until she was essentially using Abby as the third leg of her table. Rickety any sort of construct built even in part from an Irene doubtlessly was.

"How exactly does James speak to you?" Irene studied the text she continued to blithely believe was the King James version. Her eyes scrolled as if controlled by the non-organic variety of mouse, rudely flicked back and forth in a microcosm of all that was wrong with the internet generation. But she was legitimately going fast. One second it was 'where do you think all these appalling wars and quarrels come from?' A few seconds of skipping rope with Abby's pointer finger later and she was reading about messages and destiny. An itch over her retina caused some skips. Nothing significant, maybe a few lines or a dozen lost. But something made some sort of impact, the K-T event for her dinosaur brain. 'If you know the right thing to do and don't do it, that, for you, is evil.'

Sounded contrived.

"Lots of talk about not sassing or undermining folks for spite, mind, but I can't think of anybody I'm lookin' to badmouth?"

"I legitimately doubt you could badmouth anyone if they had, like, a gun to your head and the distinctive aroma of fish and sewers about them." Maybe Irene didn't know Abby quite well enough to make such an assertion. But hey, it was a compliment. Irene hoped. "But man. I bet there are some people right at this school that James here has got on his naughty list." It wasn't a question, but experience had taught Irene that this was the sentence that either triggered gossip or pointed ignoring. When she remembered to use it, anyways. She'd run the stats someday, maybe get a number that was above zero if she was lucky.

"Easing someone else's struggle." Well it was quite the compliment lobbed Irene's way. For the briefest of moments her ego happily purred, satiated by niceties. Sure, she was totally a good girl at heart. But wait a minute. What was it that the people who used these books with the huge crosses and robes and stuff said? Practice what you preach. By Abby's standards... Well. Irene didn't work at a clinic or a shelter, really, unless one counted the Vaults from the Fallout series. Her Fallout character, now there was a saint, save the whole accident where she had picked the wrong option with the nuclear bomb. She didn't like to talk about that one. No, wait, focus. Irene wasn't her character, even though said character was named Irene. Irene was Irene. The 'herself' Irene. Descartes eat your heart out.

So, no clinic, no shelter. Not even much family, really. Asimah and Mom and Dad... had she even really seen a concentrated amount of them since Dad's birthday that February? The one she'd spent half of street passing with the girl the table over half her age?

Irene wasn't bothered, not yet. She needed at least a few more existential screw ups to really make her feel that alien turning of her stomach.

"Uh-huh, I see." Irene managed to keep the conversation going, even through the distractions of her own ruminations. "Well, uh. Thanks! I mean I don't do much. I don't even rub my hands all that often, I mean it's super hot like every month of the year. Why would I need to try and conserve body heat?" Irene was still sort of smiling dumbly, still sort of happily dumb. "So that sort of stuff is what you spend most of your time on?" A finger instinctively pried at the page, against Abby's possible wishes, trying to turn it. Maybe Abby was actually done, but Irene sure wasn't aware enough to confirm that fact.

[Emprexx Plush]

"Well..." Abby started hesitantly. It was always a little tricky trying to explain her roundabout way of understanding the Bible without sounding completely crazy. "It's a little complicated, to be frank. I'm not too interested in talking to James, though I'm sure he was a swell guy what with being the brother of Jesus and all! For me, though, reading the Bible is about seeing what God had to say to someone else, or at least what they thought He did, and what He can say to you through that, if that makes any sense?" It probably didn't. This was one of those struggles of not being a "yes sir" sort of Christian, as she put it. People got your points a lot quicker when they were straightforward, even if that made them worse points in her opinion. The good Lord never promised her or anybody else the easy way, though, so she couldn't complain.

She giggled a bit at the imagery of Irene's...compliment? It sure felt like one, and she liked to assume the best. Irene didn't seem like the type to work in sneaky back-sass for no reason. Not that Abby knew her extremely well, but she'd never heard tell of Irene getting into that sort of trouble, and she wasn't about to side-eye someone for making pleasant conversation. That kind of thinking just got you all tied up in knots and worries until you assume everyone's got something nasty to say about you!

Irene seemed interested in her work at the shelter, and in her Bible, so she nodded eagerly as she let her turn the page onward. "Mmmhmm! Usually three or so afternoons and nights at Cornerstone or Safehouse, then maybe a night or two at my dad's vet clinic, and as much time as I can with the family." That had been less and less recently, as she spent more time at one shelter or another. Three nights was probably a conservative estimate, to be honest. She felt a little guilty about that, but there were so many people in need. The notion shook off as she forced herself back into the present and smiled up at Irene. "How about you? What're you getting up to these days?"

[Cicada]

"Jesus had a brother? I thought he was born from some chick who never had the sex and all?" Irene managed to make that sentence sound even more uncomfortable than the sum of it's words. "But no, that totally makes sense," Irene held Abby's gaze evenly, one could see the neat pirouettes of the little gears in Irene's brain through the clear of her eyes. Really, it only made sense. Implicit lessons from the accounts of someone who had borne witness to what the reader was actually supposed to learn from, in this case god and stuff. Secondary source, pretty much. The same kind of shit Irene would be dropping on her Tolstoy essay, though possibly with less pretty language. Or more, if she wanted to give Webber a headache. "I mean one of the things is that the guy in the sky's word is supposed to be interpreted by the followers, not just spelt out? Well making it hearsay like this just enforces that. Pick out the meaning from the meaning hidden within the story and all. You know, I bet all these Bibles and stuff would make good fodder for English class." Irene swore there was further points she could have made with her improvised discourse but her mind was already veering away, tires of her mind screeching as they banked to the heavens.

In other news. Irene really wanted to play Fallout again, now that she'd reminded herself. Other other news, the compliment had worked. Abby's cute little giggle was infectious, it was well received as Irene herself giggled. Half on imitative impulse, but she was legit feeling the vibes. Why didn't she hang out with this girl more? She had something of a mean niceness about her, it seemed to saturate the very air. Okay, page turn:

'And a final word to you arrogant rich: Take some lessons in lament. You'll need buckets for the tears when the crash comes upon you. Your money is corrupt and your fine clothes stink.'

Damn, did that mean Irene had to do laundry more often? She would hate to have some sort of miasma following her just because she happened to drown in brands and all that.

"Five nights..." Irene murmured. That was a lot of nights, so went the gospel of Rene (1:1). "That's insane! How do you find the time to have spare time and all that?" Spare time, that's what the first verse of Rene would be on. 'Spendth thy time on the god given game of two dimensions'. Throw in praise of the waifu and heck, that was half of Irene's character on paper. "And I've been, uh. Climbing rank in League of Legends, if you ever heard of it. I mean it's no charity work and all that awesome stuff you do, but I wanna be the first girl pro gamer in the world. Well, secondish."

[Emprexx Plush]

Oh Lord, she thought with a smile, here we go! Getting into these sorts of questions always excited her. "It's slippery, when it comes to Mary! Some people say the "Virgin" part of "The Virgin Mary" only matters for Jesus's birth, and after that all bets are off. More traditional folks are hung up on her being a virgin her whole life and reject James as anymore than a "brother in Christ," like all other Christians, and just think of the two of them as pretty close? You're right though, it's exactly the sort of thing that'd make for a great English assignment!"

English might be a little bit of a simplification. To really get into all of it you'd have to do a little bit of Latin and Hebrew, at the very least, though luckily there were a lot of folks who'd already done the legwork there. Still, it might be a little much for a high school assignment? Abby would have a blast with it, though, and she imagined Irene probably would too from her interest. 'Course, some of the more stuck-up types would get fussy about the whole thing, but what was the harm in just talking? It always seemed so silly to her to get worked up about what other people thought about God, as long as they weren't using it to hurt anybody.

Irene had a pretty cute giggle. Had she ever laughed around her before? Maybe they just didn't hang out enough. That could change, though! She always liked making new friends, and she seemed kind of intent on breezing through her Bible. Time would probably be an issue, as she kind of pointed out while marveling at how much time Abby spent away. She gave a small shrug and a chuckle. "I don't need that much spare time, really. I'd rather be helping someone out than taking time for myself, it's just sort of how I'm wired? When I'm on my lonesome with nothing to do, I can't help but think of all the things I could be doing to make the world a little brighter instead, and it makes me sort of antsy. It's like an itch I've just gotta scratch, if that makes sense?"

League of Legends? Abby felt like she'd heard people talking about it before, but she wasn't into video games. Still, as long as Irene was having fun! "That sounds like a great goal," she said with a smile, "get a little bit of that girl power going around! I mean, that's just as important as anything else. Everybody needs someone to look up to, and I'm sure there's all sorts of people you could inspire by being a positive example in the whole gaming thing!"

[Cicada]

This all reminded Irene so much about how she got when talking about... stuff, something or another. One parts old dead white people theories and one parts video games and Mountain Dew and Irene had the typical recipe of her average fun conversation. Well okay, maybe that was unfair. All conversations were fun, some were just slightly out of her element. By some degree. Okay, most of them were. But Abby, she seemed to have something, a brain child that needed to be birthed.

"Well that's all interesting. Literal interpretation of the book of god is a more traditionalist stance, right? So where do you stand on all of that? Uh, if you're fine talking that kind of thing," Irene hastily added in addendum. She just remembered, some people got really weird when talking about this sort of stuff. All 'fire' and 'brimstone' and 'back in my day people were smited (smitten?) for their trespasses on god's lawn' or however that phrasing went. "But yeah, I mean. Totally English worthy. It's like equal parts English and History and all, super relevant to that integration of concepts stuff the teachers sometimes drill on the start-of-school rubric. Like, I'm sure if we talked to faculty about it..."

If. That was a big question for someone like Irene. Now that Abby was talking about it... Irene couldn't really fathom not having space in her schedule to do nothing of substance. But the one who kept her schedule full was the one who was all nice and pretty and such. Even when she wasn't doing anything she was thinking of the ways she could be doing something meaningful. Irene, well. Even when she was doing something probably worth her time she usually thought of the more mundane aspects of her day. Like 'hey, wonder what I'll play when I get home?'. But, well. it didn't matter that much. Right?

"Uh, it does make sense! I dunno, I just never feel that same compulsion, myself. It must be weird, always doing stuff that's so... serious? Intense? Grown-up?" Oh there was that dreaded word again. They did have multiple conversational threads that Irene was sort of tracking though. The thing with whether Jesus could be 'your mom' joked or not, the now kinda uncomfortable stuff with the real talk. Oh, and League, there it was. Irene flopped off Abby in a fluid roll of her shoulders. Back to Earth she drifted like a particularly obnoxious leaf. The one that refused to get in the pile with all the others no matter how many times it was raked and just sort of sat there and crumbled into ever more aggravatingly tiny pieces. Why move? It was nice and warm on the grass.

"I mean, I'm pretty happy about it. Like I've got my peel support game on point, that used to be my shortcoming bot lane because I'm more aggressive than the Cochise Coyotes on their ninth. But I've added Janna and Lululululu to my roster and I think I'm really getting the whole 'don't roam when I'm not supposed to' stuff down. Just have to get my ward timings on point and I..." Okay, no, there was no way Abby understood, like. Anything at all from the last few seconds of sustained rant. Irene just fell silent on that note, trying to find the punctuation to her last sentence in the cotton fluffies that floated above.

[Emprexx Plush]

Abby wanted to chase this dragon about talking to an English teacher or two about critical Bible reading, but sandwiched in her head between spilling about beliefs and trying to process all of Irene's gamer talk it got all smushed up and forgotten. As the stream of confusing words Irene had blurted out rumbled back through her head, she shook it slowly and looked up at her with amazement. "Gosh. How you keep all that straight, I'll never know! You sound like you've got it all pretty well figured out, though. I'd get so lost, trying to pull anything like that off, but I'm sure you've got a real knack for it."

Now, this sort of talk could be shaky ground with some folks. Irene seemed like she didn't mind too much, though, so when she asked Abby's opinion she was happy to give it. "I'm not much for tradition, as it turns out," she giggled, "I'm part of a wacky offshoot that's been popping up over the last few years. I don't know if you've ever heard of a fella named Rob Bell, but he's a kinda controversial writer and pastor I like to study. Lots of beliefs like no Hell, be nice to everybody, nobody's got room to judge anyone else and we should all support each other to have the best journey we can." She pulled a slightly sarcastic smile and dropped her voice in mock secrecy. "Y'know, really crazy stuff like mutual decency and charity and the like." Someone might note that last bit was dangerously close to sass, but Abby was sure she had no idea what they could be thinking.

Her mind was circling back around just right now, as she stretched back against the tree. "Do you have any sorta philosophy you dig into, Irene? If that's alright to ask!"

[Cicada]

Abby legitimately looked impressed, somehow. Irene's first instinct was to feel gratified, validated in her ignoble pursuits. Second instinct was to be slightly suspicious. Abby wasn't a nerd, geek, creep, loser, or any of the other folk Irene knew from her general gaming circle. But hey, it was probably just legitimate openness of mind and heart. Irene decided she liked Abby more than ever, in this moment of moments. Irene also decided that she needed to get some new gaming friends.

"I mean, I guess I just care about it and that's why it all works out. Like you and your commitments to the community. I doubt I could track all of that." Well, maybe. Maybe if Irene was just a little more inspired. Reached out that tiny little thing she called a hand a little more. Irene didn't want to think about that anymore, though, and the conversation was changing currents as rapidly as Irene's own neurons were. She could sail around the rough patch, straight for smooth waters and easy times. 'Mutual decency and charity'. Ugh, no. Irene wasn't about to entertain the disquieting, slow and pained rumination anymore than she had to. Abby was talking about what she believed in, what made her tick. What made her a better woman. Irene was even inclined to read the sudden tic in Abby's smile the wrong way. Abby had a cannon pointed her way, but it wasn't quite the friendly one.

Irene was just being silly. She just needed a moment, a protracted one where she seemed visibly disturbed, eyes fluttering between several states of focusing on nothing in particular. And then it was all good, she half-forgot why she had weathered a gnarl in the contortions of her intestines. Irene straightened up into a sitting position, knees clamped to her chest, so she could watch Abby lounge against the tree.

"Yeah, I guess..." A very well-thought out response, for sure. "Oh. Philosophy. I believe in the scientific method, I guess. And I skew liberal, like Jeffersonian or LBJ or Carter level ideals. I dunno about religion but I like the sound of your guy." Irene had missed the name, something like Alexander Graham Bell? "Hell's just, like, Pavlovian conditioning for the ancient man. Scare tactic, you know?"

[Emprexx Plush]

A scare tactic came pretty close to Abby's opinion. Whether it came from good or bad intention, telling people they were going to be punished forever was a cheap and dishonest trick in her mind, one that didn't line up with the picture of love, sacrifice, and patience that she felt God represented. From what she understood, the whole thing was a whole lot more like the Greek conception of the afterlife than the one present in Judaism. Not that she was an expert in either, mind, but still. I

"Scare tactic is sort of there," she agreed, "though I like to think of it more as a compromise? The Bible's full of 'em. You won't find much talk of Hell in the Old Testament, for instance, that was a very New Church idea that a lot of scholars think stemmed from appeals to post-Hellenic beliefs! It's why you have to take the Gospels, and even more Paul's letters, with a grain of salt. They were all trying to appeal to their audience and that made them tweak things here and there. I like to think their heart was in the right place, but boy, does it leave us with a mess in the here and now!"

She nodded as she thought about Irene's brief notes on philosophy. "I can get all sorts of behind that. I mean," she said with a little bit of a wry grin, "firsthand experience with my dads doesn't leave me much room in the way of warm and fuzzies on the conservative end of things. I'm not inclined to give much to anybody who would discriminate against me and mine."

[Cicada]

Sort of there? It was the most 'there' anything would ever be in all mortal history! But eh, this was Abby's field of expertise. Irene understood on some level that now was not the time to make an ass of herself. Not for a lack of trying:

"You sure about the heart being in the right place bit? It's kinda like most political systems, ain't it? The road to hell is paved with intentions." She'd missed the 'good', but heaven forbid she actually ever get an idiom completely right without divine intervention. "I mean I guess it's interesting to think about the historical evolution. As much as I dunno about the details and all." Who was Paul and what was he writing letters to? "Weird that they called the time right after hell was invented 'post-hellenic'. That would be like calling the time right after modernism was invented 'post-modern'. Though I'm sure some hipster assholes were already on it." Well Irene had forgotten at least some of her early Western history unit.

So Abby's fathers was one of those fathers, huh? The well-reported bane of many a person of Tumblr stock. Irene couldn't really relate, though sometimes she liked to pretend that she could. No need to lose precious hashtag material. This time around though Irene had to put her stance on the matter out in the open. "I dunno, my parents have never really been too much about that whole 'young missy you listen here' sort of deal. I really can't imagine, but I'm sorry it's all like that, Abby. Uh... have you ever told him how you feel about the things?" Clarify Irene, clarify. "That he says?"

[Emprexx Plush]

Oh. Oh dear. Irene had misunderstood her just a little bit, and Abby couldn't help giggling. "Oh Irene, I'm sorry, that was my fault! I forget that some people don't know. It's not like that and, uh, it's not a matter of "he", but "they." I have two dads, and they're not real political or anything, but just kinda by existing there's not a lot for a gal like me on the conservative side of things."

She stretched back against the tree and folded her hands against her stomach. "Not that I don't think there are any LGBT conservatives, mind, or that they can never get along, just, with the way things are on that side right now, there's a lot of animosity over rights and such that makes me real uncomfortable. I just want people to be happy and free to be themselves. I don't feel like that's too much to ask, personally."