Lily Brooks Sally Jansen
ft. Elfie
Lily looks in the mirror one last time and sighs.
'I can do this', she says to herself once more before forcing a gentle smile on her face, because that's how Sally would look like, right?
She picks her backpack with the gifts and her actual clothes and leaves the bathroom for good.
By the time she leaves, she's still feeling pretty nervous about all of this. She looks from side to side many times, just to see if one of Sally's friends has already gotten to the party. She's got a list of all of Sally's friends, and together with the huge bag of presents, she's feeling more like Santa than Sally.
The situation does somehow get weirder than it already was the moment she sees, out of nowhere, some… one with reindeer horns, approaching her while giving her the middle finger.
"What the fu-!?" is Lily's instant reaction, but she quickly stops on her track after remembering she is not Lily. But seriously, how do you appear in front of someone flipping them off? "Erhm… hello?"
"Hello!" The other… person speaks up, their voice strangely high pitched but also gravelly and unclear. They're smiling, making their gesture seem even more jarring, and are looking at her intently, head to toe, as if they never saw an outfit like that.
Sally chuckles and smiles at them, while the inner Lily is just screaming and wants to get out of there. It's impossible not to lose your cool at some rando flipping you off and smiling at you while they examine every inch of your body, but she'll try. "S-so, do you need something? I'm a little bit busy right now."
"Hm…" They wait for a while, all while doing some random gestures. But then, they answer… and it's a yes.
"Elfie uh, wants to know for… gifts! And," they hesitate, "friends." It seems like it's a lot of effort for them to talk at all and case in point, they can only continue once they pull out a small dictionary-looking thing and read through some of the pages. What they say next is another single word… "help."
The girl grimaces at that answer, more because it's difficult to understand. 'For gifts? What are they talking about?'
But if they want to know about (maybe that's the word they needed) "friends", whatever that means, maybe Sally would agree to become their friend.
Lily doesn't like where this is going.
"Oh, right, then, Elfie. My name is Sally. I guess we can hang out for a bit," she says with a smile.
"Elfie happy! Tank you." The smaller person keeps smiling. "Hm… what we do now?"
"Uhh…" That's actually a good question. Maybe Lily- Sally! should start looking for her friends to give them their gifts.
With this person following behind her.
"Look, I have to give some gifts to some friends of mine now. You can come with me, but…" how do I tell them not to say or do anything weird? "Never mind. Just don't go around showing your middle finger to everyone, okay?"
Elfie raises an… imaginary eyebrow. "Wait… why?" Is all they ask, apparently completely unaware of what the gesture even means.
"What do you mean w-" She clears her throat "It's not a very polite gesture. Better not to do it with people you just met."
"So… this bad?" They repeat the gesture, looking rather dumbfounded.
The girl stares blankly at them and then sighs. This has to be a joke, there's no way this person is really that unaware about that, is there?
"Yeah, let's try not to do that." They are going to ruin my cover, I can feel it.
"Hm… Sally? Why Sally has clothes… like this?" Elfie asks, still looking very attentively at their friend's outfit. A few grey fingers run on Lily's shoulder, back and forth, while two massive black eyes move closer..
Lily shivers, raising her shoulders and tries to shake Elfie's fingers off, while at the same time trying not to violently push them away.
"I-it's, well, clothes for a party of this kind," she chuckles, while she thinks of an actual answer, she can't just say 'I'm trying to look like my sick friend', right? What even is a party of this kind, though. Lily gives herself a mental facepalm. 'Oh, I suck so much at this…'
Elfie shrugs at the answer. They look down at their own clothes, and when they raise their head again, their eyes are probably even more confused. "Party… clothes? Why?" They pause, as if they were trying to solve some very hard algebra stuff. "Oh! So Sally… Sally likes them, yes?"
"Heh… Yeah, I guess so!" she lies. They are uncomfortable as hell, especially the heels, and the jewelry is probably a bit too much. Sigh.
"Oh, good! Elfie likes these clothes…" The sound of book pages turning interrupts that sentence. "Elfie likes these clothes two!" They finally say, grabbing their own shirt with one hand to indicate that's what they're talking about. "These clothes are party clothes to! Yes?"
Lily chuckles. Cute. "I guess? It shouldn't matter if you like them." She shrugs.
"Time of gift now?" Elfie makes themselves heard again. "What gift is?"
They're no longer looking that closely at their own, or Sally's outfit. Now their attention seems to be all for the presents that people are exchanging.
"Uh, well… It depends on who we find first," Lily answers, looking around the entire place. It's difficult to identify people you barely know about when there's so many people around you that you don't know at all. Many of these look the same, and Lily can only hope someone recognizes Sally first.
They both end up walking all the way back to the entrance, where Lily is finally able to recognize one of Sally's friends who had just grabbed a glass of champagne.
"Okay, this person it is. You stay here, alright?," she tells Elfie.
Like they'd ever listen. "Elfie wants to see!" They promptly answer instead, a somewhat dumb smile on their face.
"You can't-!" Lily tries protesting, but she gives up, Sally wouldn't do that, right. "Okay, you can come, but behave yourself."
"Yay!" With a happy yelp, Elfie follows Lily very closely, mimicking her every step even if it causes them not to look around and force other guests to avoid them.
The girl sighs as she approaches Sally's friend. 'I'm doomed.'
"Brooke, is that you?" She was Brooke, right? Just dropping the name out of memory like that without a second thought had Lily's internal screaming become louder.
"Oh, Sally! It's nice to see you came as well," she says, giving her a smile. Phew, she was Brooke, alright. Brooke gets closer to her and puts her free arm over hers before giving her a cheek kiss, Lily follows, she's not the biggest fan of that kind of physical contact with people she doesn't know, but it's just a friend's thing, Sally does that with her as well.
In the meantime, Elfie is right there, readying their weapon…
…hand closed in a fist, just one finger about to stick out…
Lily notices that and instinctively slaps their hand and grabs it to force them to keep it down.
Brooke doesn't seem to notice, but maybe Lily's dumb smile gives her a hint that something's going wrong.
"You look a bit weird today, are you alright?"
"W-what the-," Lily snaps, still trying to ignore Elfie. "You think so? Maybe I added too much make-up."
"Hmm… hi!" They chime in right away, only to rub salt in the wound. If the slap stopped them from embarrassing themselves - and Lily - the first time, that may very well happen now.
Without saying anything, Elfie is now mimicking what Brooke did: they try wrapping an arm around her and reaching for that cheek kiss. Even if they have never met each other…
"H-hey! What is this?" Brooke exclaims, pushing Elfie away from her, while Lily, with all of the embarrassment of her life, and just wanting to leave the place, helps her take them off. "Is this a friend of yours, Sally? I don't think I know her," she says, wiping her arm and making sure her drink didn't spill out.
"Uhh, something like that… They are Elfie. I met them at the party." With her face still red, she grabs them by the arm, and forcefully pulls them to where she is, glaring at them. "Calm down! Boundaries, do you know them?," she whispers.
"Aah? Elfie is confused." They mutter with puppy eyes.
"You can't go around touching people you don't-!"
Brooke interrupts by clearing her throat, and Lily snaps once again. Sally's friend is knitting her brows, with a confused expression, more than an upset one. "Something wrong?"
Lily takes her time to answer. "Uh… no, nothing."
"Nothing wrong!" Elfie cheers, repeating the same gesture again. As if what Lily answered was actually directed to them. They're the ones who pull Lily now, as they try once again to make contact with Brooke.
Brooke gets away from them and Lily pulls them back. "Okay, stop it, goddammit-! Shit!"
Brooke opens her eyes in surprise after listening to her friend cursing, but she doesn't say anything once she sees Lily's embarrassment.
"What is shit?" Elfie asks, kind of flailing their arms around in confusion. They're not getting anything right…
"Gosh, you are so annoying! Shut up!," the girl yells back.
"Waah… Elfie is sad at this…" They eventually step aside, puppy eyes still on their face.
Brooke clears her throat once again, this time to actually say something. "Sally… it's alright, don't worry."
"I'm not-!," she sighs. Enough! Lily takes her wig off to show her real face this time. "I'm Sally's friend, okay? She got ill, so she couldn't come and asked me to deliver her gifts for her."
She takes a small box from her bag and hands it over to Brooke. "This one's for you. Merry Christmas."
Brooke just stares blankly at her, not finding any words for Sally's friend until she accepts the present in her hands. "Oh, it's for me? Th-thanks! But can I ask you something? Why are you impersonating Sally?"
Lily scratches her head, looking away from her as she laughs, unable to hide her blush. "W-well we thought it would be funny if I came dressed as her and acted like her… I kinda realized it was a mistake as soon as I got here, though."
"My name is Lily, by the way, and…" the girl looks at Elfie now, who's still with those puppy eyes on their face, "look, sorry for yelling at you, but you kinda blew up my cover, you know? You should really work on learning about boundaries, though."
Their eyes go from pleading to worried, to those of someone reading through their final Math test for their first time. "What? Sally is… Lily? Sally-Lily liked… oh, this is so hard!"
Both of Sally's friends laugh. Lily suddenly feels more relaxed for not having to worry about acting like her friend. It's a bit disappointing that she couldn't even last as Sally for one gift, though, but at least she can now stop wearing those darn heels.
However, she still has the rest of the night to deliver the remaining presents. Once she's done with that, she's probably leaving the party, she's had enough for one night.
ft. Eleanor as Elfie
