#kind of somewhere in between being proud of claiming it (a2) and knowing that its a horrible place to grow up (a1)

[silverislander]

day 2: zaun

there's no snow in the undercity. no food half the time, either. no spare scrap goes to waste, no matter what it's made of. it is a hard life marked by rusty metal and a rough cough and it leaves topsider tourists largely unimpressed.

they'll never see it the way they're supposed to, though. a city is its people.

it's vander closing down the bar early one hot winter evening and sprinkling confetti from the rafters, and it's knowing how long he and benzo must have spent shredding flyers to make powder's snowdown wish come true. it's daring her brothers to eat the most questionable meat on the menu, and it's the first time she noticed her father's bowl of soup was always the wateriest. it's the gray fever that left her bedbound for a week and the homemade respirator ekko wore to visit her every day.

vi loves the undercity like a mechanic loves his most temperamental invention, wanting it fixed and still too proud to hand it over. zaun, though? zaun she loves like a rescued dog, knowing exactly which hand feeds.