Friday, November 4th

47.)

Friday couldn't come fast enough. I was outside and in Blossom's car by six in the evening. I had been piecing together the next few chapters of Academy A in my head all week, and the memory in my skin from that pink diaper was like a drug. Unfortunately, excitement only served to further my insomnia. When we pulled onto the freeway, Blossomed asked:

"You doing okay?"

"Mmhmm. I'm just tired." I rubbed my eyes and watched the trees pass us on the side of the road. The sun was going down, and it would be dark long before we got to Blossom's beach house. Winter was setting in.

"Then you should sleep, cupcake. Long car trips are pretty well-known for putting girls your age to sleep. My Dad used to take me for drives to get me to sleep when I was a baby too."

It was a little bit of experimenting with words, a little bit of testing the waters. Casual teasing, with a fruitful goal of care. Blossom wanted to see how it panned out.

"I'm not great at sleeping in cars," I admitted, though her particular choice of words had brought some heat to my cheeks. I sunk down a little bit in the chair and rubbed my eyes again. If only I could shake my insomnia for a few moments...

I would wake up when we got to the beach house, but something wouldn't feel right. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, Blossom would open my door, triggering the light in the car. My jeans would be soaked through. She'd make that tsk-tsk sound with her tongue.

"Goodness..." Blossom would coo, using that same tone. Warm, but mocking, without an ounce of disbelief. Of course I would wet myself: she had probably orchestrated the whole thing. "This is what I get, trusting you could be a big girl."

"But I..." I would be too sleepy to argue, still in the dizzy delirium of my nap. Blossom would pick me up like a sack of flour and rest me on her hip. It would get her top wet, but she wouldn't say anything about it.

"If this is what you can do to my car," Blossom would say, "imagine what you will do to my couch. Or my bed, God forbid. No, it's better to get you dressed properly before you have any more accidents."

I would argue and fuss, but Blossom's words would have an unknown power. They would lead my actions like a cat toy on the end of a string, until I was diapered and dressed in footed pajamas. I didn't even have footed pajamas: where had she gotten them? As time would go on, I would become more and more used to those pajamas. More and more used to my diapers. By the time I fell asleep, she would be holding my head in her lap and an empty bottle would be sitting on the coffee table.

"Sweet dreams, little girl," she would whisper, playing with my hair. But I would already be asleep.

Alas, I never was good at sleeping.

"You could climb in back and lay down, see if that helps?" Blossom suggested in the real world. "Probably should diaper you if you're going to be laying down, though, you never know what might happen."

Blossom was proud of that one. She'd gotten a small blush in response to her first bit of teasing, and she was really happy about it. But for now, her victory celebration was kept private.

I stuck out my tongue without thinking. It was a kind of bratty behavior, something childish, something I normally wouldn't do. But she was bringing up a lot of feelings in me.

"I'd rather talk to you about Academy Works," I deflected. "Any new crazy theories?" I was sure she had pored over Wendy's two chapters a dozen times by now.

"Absolutely! The more I read Academy A, the more I think that the Academies are little pocket realities, like in Paradox Space? And that's why there's not really any escape, because the answer "to how big is the Academy" and how "big is the world" are identical. And that would explain why in some Academies there's weather, and why in some there isn't, and why time moves differently - or seems to - depending on the Academy."

Blossom gushed about her theory while driving. She was an excellent multitasker, probably a function of her writing out class essays in her head whenever she sucked cock. It was good to be able to multitask in college.

"So with A, I think it's like… have you read The Langoliers? The world they go to in that story is the same world as ours, but like… the food tastes like nothing, the jet fuel doesn't burn, that kinda stuff. And I think in A, the world might be like that, and praise is the only thing that has a strong feeling to it. So it's easy to chase and crave?"

She made an interesting point. All the Academy Works stories had some kind of world-warping properties, even if it wasn't always apparent. Ai's memory manipulation, Bala's dreams, Talita's intelligence, and Kione's... well, Kione's whole world. They were always just subtle enough to still feel real, tiny little nudges away from what we understand and expect. In Academy A, it was definitely the need for praise.

"I like that theory," I smiled. Sometimes I wished I didn't already have the answers to some of these questions, because Blossom's ideas would make for great retcons. She made my stuff sound a lot more interesting than it really was.

"I'm a pretty well-read girl, all things considered," Blossom said. "Speaking of reading and books, you know you could be selling these stories on Amazon, right? You could make some money and buy some cute baby clothes or something."

That you could publish online was about the extent of what Blossom knew about the process, however.

"I don't think giving Amazon my social security number is a step I'm willing to take," I laughed. I knew it was only because Blossom was overwhelmingly supportive, but it made every moment with her better than every moment without her. Maybe I was a bit like Aya in that way. Maybe it wasn't Blossom I liked so much, but the nourishment of her praise. Maybe it was a blessing that I couldn't tell the difference.