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Xeya is headed off to college! She's going to live in a big house with a bunch of other students that's in biking distance of campus! She's both a bit nervous and extremely excited about this.
Mom drives her there and helps her unload everything, but she has to get back home to help Dad with the twins, so she can't stay to help Xeya unpack. There's a tearful goodbye, and then she starts taking her boxes up the stairs, humming happily.
"Top five liquids for sure!" Here's a cup of water for him in addition to the one for her.
"Oh I have no idea but water definitely is like, number one or two, right? She's just so important!"
She thinks for a bit. "I think it depends a lot if we're counting water-mixed-with-stuff? Like, saline solution is a banger, right, dehydration used to kill people under medical care and now it just, doesn't, that's awesome! But that is just water with salt in, and so maybe it shouldn't count separate..."
She opens her mouth, starts to say something, and then stops. "... I have silly answers but I think the truth is just that I have had a friend who feminized abstract/inanimate things... her laptop, the moon, evolution... and it got stuck in my head as a habit."
"Or, at least, I'm assuming 'personifies everything as girls' is not the same person as 'Risa Questionable-Hookup-Proclivities'."
Nodnodnod. "They are distinct! The feminizer is an tumblr friend with the username Lukewarm Bread. I call her Luke."
"I had somehow imagined that people who could make friends online would at some point exchange names."
"Sometimes we do! But like - I dunno, some people don't like the name they're born with, and sometimes if you've known someone for years their handle just becomes the thing you associate with them. I don't know Luke's IRL name because we both think 'Luke (short for Lukewarm Bread)' is hilarious, and she calls me Xeya but some of my other friends on tumblr call me by either the beginning or the end of my username there."
"Ooooh, can I follow you? I presumably won't remember why I followed you, most of the time, but that's like true for half my dash and does not bother me."
"I was in the school system as being named Elmo Dragon," he says. "Because I was like. Five. I stopped actually going by that in conversations with people well before I got clear of the record but I'm still used to paying attention to things marked 'Elmo'."
"It's that simple!" She claps her hands in emphasis.
"When did you switch to Skip?"
"It was in the rotation when I was in... ninth grade? And I dropped all my other names I used occasionally gradually over high school. I was sort of experimenting to see what kind of name made the right first impression for my purposes and Skip works pretty well and I think it's funny."
Xeya tilts her head in confusion and then thinks it through. "Oh. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh." She puts her head in her hands.
"How did I miss that..."
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