"- oh, I'm sorry - I didn't know -"

Hug hug.  "I know."

"You can be the cuddle-top. Are you sure you don't need anything?"

"I don't - " her voice catches; she clears her throat " - think so?

It's not that I want to talk about this but maybe I - should - "

"I mean you don't have to explain to me like right now, at least."

"It's just from - the first time I had my blood drank.  And maybe also the car crash a little.  Just - being trapped . . ."

"Yeah that makes so much sense. I'm sorry."

"It's okay - did dropping you on the bed hurt at all - "

"No, the bed's soft, I'm fine."

"Oh.  Good."  She takes a deep breath, and sighs.

"Did you ever go to sleepovers, and have conversations really late at night with the lights off, and everything felt less real?  And you said more than you would usually say, and could be more serious than you usually are, and it's fine because you're going to sleep soon and don't have to deal with it, and in the morning it doesn't really matter anymore, except - it still really does?"

"...wow. Uh, I did sleepovers and I guess it was sort of like that?"

Judy nods.  "I don't know if talking about the thing would just be bad or if it would be like that."

"I don't know either." Pet pet.

Judy lays back down and fumbles around for her phone, hits pause on a very legato rendition of 'Not While I'm Around'.  Closes her eyes.

"I don't . . . cry?  Anymore?"

"- vampire thing?"

"No.  - Sort of.  And I mean like actually I cry a lot, still.  Just.  Only at movies and stuff, not anything - actually important.  I think I might've . . . broken it."

"Oh no. Do you wanna - not right now probably but like do you wanna watch a sad movie and when you start crying switch to talking about important stuff and see if that fixes it."

Judy sporfles a little.  "I don't think so.  And like I mean, it's kind of useful.  I sort of did it on purpose; there's - when you have magic, it feels really cheerful, to start off, it's all like, 'woah, you have magic, there's so much stuff you could do with this magic isn't it exciting - ' and so sometimes when I was still in school I'd get upset, but I couldn't - in front of people - and so I'd just think really hard at it but not actually use any and it would sort of . . . bleed off.  And now it's way quieter and not really cheerful at all but the thing stuck.  And - it's not even that I don't like it, I just.  Nobody else knows; I'd never told anyone before."

"Okay." Pet pet.

"And now I also cry way more at movies now but like, that's fine, nothing wrong with crying at movies."

"Had a friend once who'd rate movies by how many tissues she went through."

" - That's a good one; maybe I should try it."  She pets Millie back a little, on the shoulder.  Doesn't say anything for a while, just syncs up her breathing with Millie's and lays there.

"I think saying that one helped instead of being terrible or anything," she eventually determines.  "So probably I should - actually, how early do you have to be up - I'm fine now I think, I could just go to sleep - "

"I can stay up a little longer."

"You're so nice."  Judy beams, briefly, in spite of herself.

"So, um, an important thing I haven't mentioned is that - both the times we've done the blood there's been the mug, right?  And if you skip that part, just like, face on body - both people get magic."

"Oh. That's - that's really weird? I thought you were, like, converting blood into magic."