Work Text:
Nona hadn’t considered decorations. She knew about presents, of course, and even about fancy cakes from the children at her school—the tinies, mostly—but she didn’t know birthdays entailed decorations until she walked into their flat to find it nearly bursting at the seams with ribbons and streamers. Even better, balloons! Brightly colored balloons, stuck with tape to the door and window frames.
“It’s my birthday party!” Nona clasped her hands together, too excited to leave them dangling by her sides, too overwhelmed to clap. “It is, isn’t it?”
“Of course it is,” Pyrrha said. She scooped Nona up into her strong, wiry arms, hugging just a little too tightly, until Nona was forced to squeal, “Pyrrha, you’re squishing me all the way, for real!”
Pyrrha gave Nona another firm squeeze before setting her gently back down on her feet. Blood rushed in Nona’s ears, not even for the usual unspoken reason, and her body felt sparkly and staticky, tingling all the way down to the tips of her fingers and toes. Her six month birthday: she had made it! In spite of everything, she had made it. Only…
“Where are the dogs?” Nona asked.
“Nona,” Camilla said from where she stood in the kitchen, hard at work on something Nona couldn’t quite make out over Pyrrha’s shoulder. “You know we can’t have dogs in the apartment.”
Nona did know this, but didn’t feel like being reasonable and mature about it. “Not even one?” she said. “That’s very unfair, Camilla.” She cut her eyes over to Pyrrha, then added, a bit petulantly, “Palamedes would let me.”
Pyrrha grinned at the expression on Cam’s face, the one that told Nona that Camilla wasn’t fooled at all. Pyrrha had once described it as “looking like you’ve been sucking on a lemon, Hect,” and Nona had begged and begged for a lemon in hopes it would make her look more like Camilla. Pyrrha gave her one, on an afternoon when Camilla and Palamedes were elsewhere, and Nona had popped a wedge into her mouth before running to the bathroom mirror. Her face looked just the same, with only her mouth more puckered and her eyes streaming with tears.
She had been younger, then, and taken things more literally. Anyway, this was fine, because if Nona couldn’t be as beautiful as Cam, her own face was also plenty nice looking.
“Sextus doesn’t exactly have what you’d call a strong sense of self preservation,” Pyrrha noted, to which Camilla only responded with a terse sound that was neither agreement nor disagreement.
“Couldn’t we at least see about Noodle?” Nona continued. “He’s not very big and he’s very well-behaved.” It wasn’t a real lie. Noodle wasn’t particularly well-behaved in a grander sense, but he would probably be just fine at a birthday party, since it didn’t involve any hair dryers or wrestling his feet into little shoes.
“Dogs are off the table,” Camilla said.
“I wouldn’t let them on the table!” Nona countered. “Really, Cam. I wouldn’t!”
Camilla had their largest plate held firmly in both hands, and on that plate sat something shaped like Pyrrha’s cylindrical lunch tin, only this was covered in something white and a little runny. Six skinny, mismatched candles were stuck in the top, though one was threatening to tumble over the side on a waterfall of what Nona was becoming increasingly sure was mayonnaise. Cam set the plate on the table in front of Nona’s usual seat.
“Well?” Camilla prompted, when Nona hadn’t said anything.
“It’s very nice, Camilla. Thank you,” Nona said, then tilted her head and squinted at the object. Between the candles, someone had made scribbles in a different color of mayonnaise. “Except, what is it, please?”
Pyrrha made a noise like a bicycle horn being sat on. Camilla briefly closed her eyes and took a slow breath in through her sharp, magnificent nose, before answering, “It’s a cake, Nona. A birthday cake.”
“Oh. With mayonnaise on it?” Nona asked.
The bicycle horn now sounded like it was being run through one of the big grinding machines at Pyrrha’s work. Pyrrha pressed her lips together so tightly they went ashen, her eyes watering as the funny sound came directly out of her nose.
“It’s frosting,” Cam said, tightly.
“Oh! Frosting! Of course!” said Nona, who had never heard of frosting outside of what happened to the windows when it was very cold outside and very damp and warm inside.
Pyrrha honked through her nose so hard she had to sit down. Nona took this as a cue to sit in her own chair at the table, in front of the birthday cake. The precariously perched candle took its opportunity to slide over the edge and land in a puddle of melted frosting.
“Nona, I thought you knew all about birthdays,” Camilla said.
“I do!” Nona insisted. “Lots of people don’t know about frosting, Camilla. Really!”
The corner of Camilla’s mouth twitched. Pyrrha put her head down on her arms, resting on the table, and laughed so hard her back shook. Nona kicked her under the table, though not very hard, and she did immediately feel bad about it.
“It isn’t actually my six months yet, though,” Nona said. She gave the toppled-over candle a halfhearted poke. The frosting was very sticky.
“Close enough for government work,” said Pyrrha, lifting her head from the table and wiping her eyes. “Birthday parties don’t have to be exactly on the day of, anyway. I remember when G—” She stopped and shook her head. “Just trust me on this one, Nums. It doesn’t have to be day of.”
Nona considered this. “Well, if you’re sure...”
“I’m sure,” Pyrrha said. “Back me up here, Cam.”
“I wouldn’t know. We didn’t celebrate like this on the Sixth,” Camilla said. She sat down at her place. “You know more about this than I do, Pyrrha.”
“You’ve got all the basics: decorations, cake, presents,” Pyrrha said.
“Presents?” Nona said. “I really get presents!”
“Of course,” said Pyrrha. “Wouldn’t be a birthday party without them, would it?” As she stood, she pulled her lighter out of her pocket and tossed it to Camilla. “Light those candles, will you, Hect? I’ll get the presents.”
“PresentS?” Nona asked, stressing the S. “Like more than one.”
“Two, in fact,” said Pyrrha. She disappeared into the bedroom for a moment, then returned with two lumpy packages wrapped in newspaper. One had a full color picture of the exploded water plant on it.
“Cake first, though,” said Camilla. “It should be edible. Probably.”
“Won’t kill anyone, anyway,” Pyrrha said.
Nona watched Camilla fish the errant candle out of the frosting and reposition it atop the cake. With a flick of the lighter, Camilla lit all six candles.
“What do we do now?” Nona prompted. Camilla glanced at Pyrrha.
Pyrrha grinned. “Blow them out.”
“But Camilla’s only just lit them,” Nona said. It would be shame if the candles didn’t get their full time to shine.
“If you don’t blow them out soon, they’re just going to do that frosting the rest of the way in,” said Camilla, only Nona could immediately see it wasn’t Camilla anymore, but Palamedes, smiling at her widely. “Happy birthday, Nona.”
“Palamedes!” Nona said. “I’m so glad you get to eat cake with me.”
“You know Cam doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth,” Palamedes said.
“You’re just trying to keep Hect from seeing the presents,” Pyrrha teased him.
Palamedes held up his hands. “You caught me, Captain Dve.”
“Blow them out, kiddie,” Pyrrha said, after giving Palamedes a suitable eyeroll. “But don’t forget to make a wish first.”
A wish? Nona already had everything she wanted. She had Camilla, Palamedes, and Pyrrha. She had their cozy apartment and her job at the school. She had wonderful friends. She got to take Noodle out every day. Her life, short though it had been, was a good one, full of so many wonderful things. She even had two whole presents to open. Asking for more just seemed selfish.
Still, there was one thing she hoped for, though she dared not speak it.
“Do I have to tell you my wish?” she asked.
Pyrrha shook her head. “Nope. In fact, telling your wish means it won’t come true.”
“Superstitious nonsense,” Palamedes said.
“It’s not superstition,” said Pyrrha. “It’s science.” The noise of disgust and exasperation Palamedes made would normally have sent Nona into a peal of giggles, but the matter of the wish was too serious to laugh at.
I wish that when I die, it doesn’t hurt very much, Nona thought with all her might, and she blew out the biggest breath she could. Three candles puffed out, but the other three just flickered. It took two more puffs to blow them all out, and Nona felt slightly breathless after.
Palamedes cut fat slices of cake for each of them as Pyrrha slid the presents across the table. The first present was smaller, so Nona started with it, peeling up the tape at the seams with her nails and carefully unwrapping it. Inside was a pack of multicolor hair elastics, just like she’d asked for.
“Thank you!” Nona said, clutching them to her chest. “Oh, I love them. Thank you, thank you!”
“Don’t spend all your enthusiasm on the first one,” Pyrrha said. “Go on. Open the other one.”
Nona didn’t have it in her to be as careful opening the second package. She tore right through the picture of the waterplant to reveal a neatly folded rectangle of fabric. When Nona shook it out, she saw it was a shirt with a picture of a cartoon mustache and squiggles she knew were probably words.
“What does it say?” Nona asks.
“It’s an advertisement for mustache rides,” Pyrra says. “Dirt cheap. Some might even say free.”
“You absolutely cannot wear that out of the apartment,” Palamedes said.
“Ignore Sextus,” Pyrrha said. She dropped her voice to a stage whisper. “The Sixth House has a strongly held dislike for novelty T-shirts.”
“My objection isn’t to the novelty,” Palamedes said wryly.
“I love it, Pyrrha,” Nona said. “I love both presents so much. I’m going to put my shirt on right away, and then can you do my hair into braids? Three braids?” She paused for a moment. “Four braids.”
“Four?” Pyrrha said, shaking her head. “Oof, kid. Giving me a run for my money.”
“You haven’t got any money,” Nona said.
“She would if she stopped buying cigarettes,” Palamedes said.
“Is that timer of yours going off soon?” Pyrrha asked, raising an eyebrow.
“I’ll go change right now!” Nona said, standing to leave the table. Palamedes cleared his throat.
“Let’s at least have a few bites of cake first,” he suggested.
Nona sighed and sat back down. She didn’t mind having a cake. Having a cake was fine. The issue was eating her cake.
“Just a few bites at least,” Palamedes said. “Camilla worked hard on that.”
“The cake’s from a mix,” said Pyrrha, who had no trouble eating her cake, shoveling a huge forkful into her mouth.
“She worked hard on the frosting,” Palamedes said.
Nona put the smallest possible bite on her fork and took the tiniest possible nibble. “It tastes a bit like mayonnaise.”
“We’ll tell her you ate the whole piece,” Pyrrha said.
“But Pyrrha, that’s a lie!” Nona said.
“Just a little one,” Pyrrha said. “It’s your birthday. You get a pass on your birthday.”
“Ohhh.” That made sense. Birthdays were special like that.
Palamedes’s watch beeped. “If you’re going with that story, you’d better get rid of the evidence.”
Pyrrha reached across the table and dragged Nona’s plate in front of herself, shoveling most of the slice of cake into her mouth in a single bite. Palamedes was still laughing as he slid back into Camilla. She still had the shape of his laugh on her mouth when she opened her clear grey eyes.
“Good job clearing your plate,” she said to Nona.
“Oh yes, I love cake,” Nona answered primly.
Pyrrha kicked her lightly under the table. “Don’t oversell it, kidlet.”
“Okay, well, I like cake,” Nona said. “It was good, Camilla, really?”
Camilla’s eyes cut between Nona—who was doing her best to look innocent and sincere—and Pyrrha, who wasn’t trying to do anything at all but be her regular self.
“Well, did you like your presents, at least?” Camilla asked.
“I did!” Nona said. She held up her shirt, watching how Camilla’s face changed as her eyes skated over the words on the front.
“You’re not wearing that out of the apartment,” Camilla said. “I’m not sure you can wear that in the apartment.
“But Camilla! It’s my birthday present!” Nona said.
“Yeah, Camilla,” Pyrrha said, with the biggest grin on her face. “It’s her birthday present.”
“Fine,” Camilla sighed. “You can wear it in the apartment.”
“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Nona said. She leapt from her chair and gave Camilla a huge hug around the neck.
“Hey, where’s mine?” Pyrrha asked. “I picked out that shirt!”
“Thank you, Pyrrha!” Nona gave Pyrrha an equally enthusiastic hug.
“Anything for our girl,” Pyrrha said.
The excitement of the birthday, and the weight of knowing what they needed to do the next day, suddenly caught up with Nona. She was suddenly caught by a yawn so wide it made her jaw ache. She hated to go to be early, though. She was six months old, after all, and time was running short.
“Thank you for the birthday, Camilla and Pyrrha,” Nona said. “And tell Palamedes thank you, too. And that I love him. And I love you, too! You don’t have to tell him that part.”
“I will,” Camilla said. “Cross my heart.
“Happy birthday, Hairy Maclary,” Pyrrha said.
Nona’s heart was so full, and her joy was so complete, that she couldn’t imagine a full one-year birthday being anywhere near as good as what she’d just experienced. She really was the luckiest girl in the whole entire world.