Tess Doerner (bastionofsanity) wrote in madisonvalley, @ 2022-07-30 21:34:00 |
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Entry tags: | !closed, !narrative, tess doerner (bastionofsanity), ~2022 july |
Who: Tess Doerner
What: Being pleasantly thinky
When: Saturday morning
Where: In town
Warnings: None
Status: Complete narrative
The cruise had been an incredible two weeks for Tess, a chance for experiences she would never get back home and wouldn't get in Madison Valley either if not for the cruise itself. It'd been weird to realize at one point that she'd been out of the hellscape version of town for an entire year, but it'd been nice to have that realization at the same time because hi, obviously.
And the fact that they'd all been able to have a little reunion of sorts had been good, too. It was somehow reassuring to see everyone, to see for herself how they were doing. She might not see or talk to most of them very often, but they were connected in a way that nobody else in town could share. If she couldn't have her chosen family from home, then the others were just as good.
Which, of course, didn't mean that she didn't miss her people from home. She missed them with a passion -- well, except for Collier, who could go sit on a cactus for all she cared -- and it hurt that she didn't have any of them in town with her. But it was a hurt that she had grown to live with. It hurt, but it didn't feel like it was going to rip her apart. Even with as much as she missed Kevin, it was a pain she could deal with. If nothing else, she would see her loved ones whenever Madison Valley saw fit to send her home, whether sometime in the near future or at the end of a very long life. Knowing that made things easier.
Tess was running late for work, which meant she'd just barely had time to stop at Starbucks -- but she'd done it anyway, because it was one of the incredibly normal things she was able to do in town and she was always going to appreciate that.
Plus muffins. Yummy, yummy muffins.
Coffee in hand -- as well as a bag with a couple muffins besides hers, because she was a firm believer in sharing the love with her coworkers -- she headed out to her car. It wasn't the one she'd had back home, was a far more modern one -- though nothing particularly fancy and definitely not new -- but it was hers and she liked that.
As she reached her car, she took the briefest of moments to look around, a slight smile on her face. Life wasn't easy, but it was good.