Rising Shards

Stella told me I was fantastic at everything, but that wasn’t entirely true, and I realized this as I had a rare moment of nerves before I had to give my presentation. I wasn’t bad at public speaking, but this time was slightly different, as Stella had invited herself along. After I finished taking care of her needs the prior day, and Stella took care of mine, she asked if she could see my speech. After clarifying she meant seeing the finalized version and not just me doing a rehearsal or whatever, I told her the drawbacks right away.

“Parking will be a pain if you drive, they have really dumb parking passes at this college we’re meeting at.” I said. “And it’s a long walk from there if you’re going just to hear me talk about boring stuff. And hear other Cani doctors talk about other boring stuff.”

“I’m OK with that,” Stella said, sighing as she got comfy under her blanket. My suit had come off during our fun (Stella wasn’t happy about that, but we made up for it shortly after I made sure I didn’t toss aside my clothes in a way that would make getting them ready again for the next day an issue), and she was similarly unclothed. I got under the blanket as well, using my newfound powers of cuddle to be the big spoon for Stella. “Can I come with you? Would that be an issue?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Maybe just like hang out in the student lounge building so we don’t walk in together? There will be a few RS teachers there but I doubt they’ll be searching the lots for our super deluxe secret affair we got going on here.”

Stella was adamant she’d come with, which leads into something I was not fantastic at. While Stella clearly liked performing for others, the idea of doing my presentation with her in the crowd had me actually nervous. I was in my suit again at least so I could coast on looks since she was really into me dressing fancy. So thing Dr. Evy Diast was not fantastic at #1 of uh, probably a lot: preparing for a speech with my partner likely taking her seat and watching. Making matters worse, my peers in the Cani academic community could see I was a little frazzled, so I had to try and chill out.

Trying to chill out meant eating a bunch of muffins and chugging OJ at the little breakfast area they set up for us. After I’d satisfactorily stress ate and checked for crumbs, it was time to listen to a few other presentations before I went up.

When I loaded my slideshow from my USB drive, I spotted Stella taking her seat. She waved, but halfway through the motion realized she maybe shouldn’t and quickly put her hands back down.

“You guys seem a lot better behaved than my kids this year,” I started once the slideshow was up. “But if you have any snarky comments, I’ll tell you what I tell them and say to save them for the Q&A part at the end if you really gotta let them out.”

I tried not to ham things up knowing Stella was in the crowd (well, I could’ve let out a giant theatrical performance that she might’ve loved, but again, my peers were around so I’d rather not damage my reputation with them).

“From the census this year, things are pretty much the same as last go round,” I said. “Mainly we’ve been keeping an eye on the amount of Pyre Cani for obvious reasons. They’ve remained about the same, but there is a pocket of southwestern VCV that’s seen an uptick. Fang Moon Web’s coming up, so it’s always good to keep an eye on the Cani groups that are more likely to be affected by the moon’s changes during that.”

Stella got out a notebook and started taking notes, her posture a spitting image of her little sister. I almost said “Aw, you don’t have to take notes.” But that would give away I was staring at my partner when I was supposed to be speaking.

I made it through the speech without incident and enjoyed the mild applause from the audience. Not all of my jokes landed (thing #2 I’m not fantastic at: getting a consistent laugh rate from a classroom for my jokes), but some did enough that I was feeling pretty cocky.

Once the event was over, Stella texted that she’d wait at the car so we didn’t raise suspicions. I didn’t have the heart to say none of the Rising Shards teachers and staff I thought would be there actually showed up, so I made a bit of small talk before heading to the parking lot. Stella looked…sleepy? Bored? It had me worried.

“Let me guess.” I said as I buckled up. “’Wow, you weren’t kidding about how boring that was gonna be.’”

“Uh, no actually,” Stella said. “That was super interesting. The ones that weren’t you weren’t as engaging or as good as you, but I feel like I learned a lot!”

“And the one that was me?” I asked eagerly.

“Looked hot as fuck in that suit.” Stella said. “Oof, I was swooning, Evy. Keep that suit on when we’re home, please?”

“You got it.” I said.

Thing #3 I’m bad at: Assuming someone I care about will think I sucked at something when I did alright. But maybe the suit helped there.