Miriam thought again of Narnia. In some ways, all of Carrigan’s was a portal world, where joy and laughter and light in the darkness was the steadfast rule.

“Tell me something nobody ever thinks to ask you about yourself,” Noelle asked quietly.

“You have to give me more specifics,” Miriam replied. “People don’t ask me all that much about myself. Or, I guess Bloomers do, but they definitely don’t want anything real.”

“Okay,” Noelle paused. “What Avatar tribe are you?”

“Earth. Easy. Why be anyone else when you can be Toph?” She stomped her foot for emphasis.

Noelle laughed. “What DnD alignment are you?”

“Chaotic good obviously. Ask me a hard one.” Her curls were blowing around her head, her cheeks were wind-chapped, and she was grinning so hard it hurt.

Noelle leaned back against the seat and tapped her finger against her mouth, pretending to think hard. Miriam followed the movement of her finger and thought about Noelle’s lips.

“You’re bi, what does that mean to you?” Noelle asked finally. “There’s no universal ‘this is what bisexuality looks like.’ What is it for you? You don’t date men? It doesn’t seem like?”

“I mean, not to get too deep into queer theory—” Miriam said.

“That’s the sexiest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” Noelle interrupted, and Miriam laughed. She snuggled in closer to Noelle, letting herself relax into her warmth and scent.

“If Josh Jackson or Timothy Olyphant showed up at my door, I would probably faint from lust, but romantically and emotionally I rarely meet cis men I can connect to. Also, I have Cole, you know. He’s one of the great loves of my life, one of the cornerstones of my happiness. I haven’t often found that cis men can find room in their lives for my relationship with Cole, and it’s nonnegotiable.”

She looked out at the glinting world, then back at Noelle. This space they’d created compelled her to go deeper, tell more of her truth. “But also, there’s this Ocean Vuong quote about how being queer saved his life, and in a bigger way, that’s what being bi means to me. If I’d grown up in my house and I’d not had this piece of me that refused to bow to expectations, that grew wild in the cracks of all my attempts to be like everyone else, I don’t know if I would even have been able to do art. To see that art was a possibility. It gave me the option to be something other than what I was told I had to be.”

“It freed you,” Noelle said, nodding. “Being butch felt that way, for me. This immense freedom.”