#princess heartmaker is just screaming
It’s been a wee bit of a Day, and I almost just skipped this, but holy hell it’s June and I don’t want to start the month off slacking. I already started it off with breathing issues I gotta get something right today.
Anywhoodles. Why is Princess Heartmaker screaming at our Idiots this week…?
She shook her head one more time and looked up, offering a smile that wasn’t as bright or confident as Alya’s but was the best Marinette could manage that morning. Alya’s smile flickered in the face of it.
“You’re right,” she sighed, reaching up to rub at her eyes. “Sorry. I’m just…really out of it today. You know I had a long day yesterday. The past few yesterdays.”
“Which is exactly why this is going to be so good for you,” Alya said, nodding certainly. “Come on, girl. I’ve been trying to get you to come with me for weeks now, and you’re finally here. Just two more steps and you’ll be inside the door. The next hour is going to change your life – trust me.”
Marinette tried to fix her smile and nodded, her hands tightening on the straps of the backpack her water bottle and wallet were stashed in. Alya was right – she usually was. This was going to be good for her. She needed this.
“All right, Alya,” she said, taking a deep breath – the first of many that morning, she was sure. “Let’s do this.”
“Woohoo – that’s my girl!” Alya cheered. She clapped her hands on Marinette’s shoulders and shoved her towards the door, and the next thing Marinette knew she was inside the steamy yoga studio and staring at a room full of unfairly attractive people with worlds more experience than her. She froze just inside the door.
“…nope, changed my mind,” she said, her eyes locking on a really unfairly attractive guy standing by the cubbies lining the back wall. He had blue-tipped hair and arms that made her want to drool and a smile that made her stomach flip pleasantly.
And he was talking to a girl with a long brunette ponytail who was a million times hotter than her and clearly his girlfriend and could probably bend into a pretzel and what the hell was she thinking she couldn’t do this she –
“Marinette!” Alya hissed, pushing her forward. “Class is gonna start in five minutes, girl – move!”
The thing was…yoga was Alya’s thing. Well, technically it was Nino’s thing, but when Alya had started dating Nino a lot of Nino’s Things had become Alya’s Things. Yoga was one of them. And Alya, being the Great and Loyal Bestie she was, had immediately realized (after one class) that yoga clearly needed to be Marinette’s Thing, too.
…never mind that Marinette already had a Million Things vying for her attention, like school, sewing, helping at the bakery, student council, the hundred or so activities her friends were involved with that she always showed up to for support like the good friend she was, her high-profile commissions (Jagged Stone was great but so demanding, and he had been all too eager to give her name to his fellow rockers – though he always got first dibs), starting up her boutique, the few babysitting jobs she still did for kids she’d been watching since they were in diapers, the fashion competitions she was always applying to to make sure she stayed on Gabriel Agreste and Audrey Bourgeois’s radars, checking in on her grandfather, making time for her Nonna’s increasingly more frequent visits, and…Marinette was a very busy person and perhaps stretched just a little too thin, ok? She got that.
Which had been exactly Alya’s point. Marinette was stressed, and yoga was great for stress. Alya was convinced attending just two sessions a week with her would do wonders for Marinette’s mental health, but just two sessionswastwo whole hours Marinette wasn’t sure she could commit to – especially when she still had daily meditations with her mother, and how helpful had those been for her stress?
But Alya was her best friend, and Alya was trying to be helpful, and so – even though Jagged Stone’s current commission was sitting half-done on her dress form at home and her back was still killing her from hauling fifty or so sacks of flour the night before – here she was. About to embarrass herself in a room full of unfairly attractive, impossibly bendy people she would most likely never see again.
Maybe she should go toss herself into the river…
