st_alksthroughwalls | [ Text ] Sunny, backdated to Maya's departure

The closets at first only yielded the sort of things one would expect, namely clothing out of the boutique. But as she moved further back there were easels and... "I think I found something," she said as her fingers ran over what felt like animal hide, some life coming into her voice for the first time today.

"Nothing much here," Kitty replied after sorting through the toiletries and personal items and finding nothing too personal or sexual. Caroline or the inn itself could take care of the regular left-behinds and Vex would get the clothes, so she headed in the direction of Sunny's voice. It was a big enough room that she actually couldn't see her immediately.

"What's in there?"

"I'm not sure," Sunny said, trying to get the whole bundle in her arms at once. It was considerable, though, and she couldn't manage it smoothly, but she carefully drew the fabric out of the closet. "I think this was her Easter egg gift."

As soon as she started drawing it out, Kitty recognized the bundle and nodded. "Yeah," she said and offered a hand getting it from the closet. "I think you're right. She said something about a sweat lodge." Her Chief's maybe?

"She did," Sunny murmured, studying the material in silence for a long moment. "We need to think of what to do with this before someone else decides that's a project they complete because they read a book once." There was only one other Native person at the inn, and Sunny didn't think she'd be interested. Anybody else, themselves included, really had no place using a tipi.

At Sunny's words, Kitty's brows knit over a very pained face. "Oh my god. That would be awful." And it could happen, too. "Or worse, turned into decoration by the Inn for the Indian Room of something."

She rubbed her fingers between her brows where a headache already wanted to lodge itself. "I read once that a lot of Native ceremonial artifacts weren't intended to be preserved but left to the elements. But I don't know if that applied to Maya's people. I'd rather put it all somewhere safe. Don't you think?"

Sunny nodded. "The Temple maybe?" She didn't want to keep it in her room. She didn't want to risk destroying it the next time she felt the need to burn it down.

Also it was a bastion of racism and no.

"The Temple's supposed to be for everyone, though," Kitty pointed out. "It feels like an invitation to use it for something it was never intended to be." And she didn't really want to keep it in her room, because that felt wrong.

"How worried are we? Because there are places you and I can go that other people can't."

"Very," Sunny said plainly, after shooting down a few other responses about well-meaning white people who had already said blindingly racist things. "There's plenty I wouldn't trust white people with. There must be plenty you don't trust Gentiles with. Native peoples are understood and respected even less than either of our groups."

Kitty nodded. She supposed it was a demonstration of Sunny's point that she didn't explain that Gentiles weren't a problem for her, in general, or that there wasn't much to keep away from them, since almost everything meaningfully Jewish in a religious sense already belonged to the Gentiles already. And there wasn't anything cultural left after the Holocaust. It was just...not the sort of thing she'd say to someone who wasn't Jewish.

So she tried to think what she'd do if it was something of Moonstar's, because Dani was the only other Native person she really knew. Probably, she'd give it to Yana, since they were a lot closer, and Yana would probably put it somewhere in Limbo. But Yana didn't really know Maya and that didn't feel appropriate.

"The Inn's got some crawlspaces between the floors. No one would have any reason to go looking there."

It did not entirely feel right, but the problem was that nothing they did would be entirely the right thing to do. It was just the best they were capable of, and the best their own experience on the outside of the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant American cultural norm that somehow still survived and thrived in a bubble universe could tell them to do.

Sunny nodded. "All right. Let's do that."

Kitty thought about it a minute more. "Do you think it would be better if we put them inside the mountain? I could do that." She didn't know if Sunny's abilities would allow her to go inside a rock-and-dirt structure, but Kitty could.

That actually got the first hint of a smile out of Sunny all day. "Would you hit me very hard if I said that's hardcore?"

[ Text ] Sunny, backdated to Maya's departure

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