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Wasn't youth a good thing?
Diana yawned, she brought her legs up under her and hugged them.. Resting her chin on top.
There was a woman she met, not even an hour ago. Older, quiet, friendly. She had hair like ash, and clothes that didn't seem to be in fashion anymore. Not that she'd really know anything about that.
Diana wore clothes, but she didn't know fashion. Not like Donna, or Cassie. That was something different, something a part of them, something important. Something they grew up with.
Diana didn't grow up with women who had grey hair.
She didn't know when she would stop aging, if she already had. Philippus always looked at her and sighed, always commenting how much she resembled Hippolyta. Diana didn't know how to feel about that now.
She wondered if her mother would ever look old, like the women here. If her skin would be sunken with stress, but her eyes as bright as ever. Diana thought it was beautiful.
She'd never seen diamonds before she left the island, or snow, or old women.
Maybe it was the experience that Diana was drawn to. On the days where she missed her mother and sisters, nothing helped, or felt like home except sitting with those women. The ones who knew themselves, who survived, who understood.
Etta felt like home, too.
Barbara, used to.
Diana sighed.
The woman she met earlier had a lovely voice. Diana stopped to talk to her because she hummed a song, eyes closed, content on a bench. Diana missed that calm.
So Diana asked if the woman wouldn't mind company, to which she replied: "not at all"
Diana sat and the woman looked at her with a smile.
They sat in silence for a while before the woman told Diana that not too often now did people ask to be with her.
Diana was swung through a wall that day, but she felt that more.
Diana asked why, and the woman replied that when you get to be as old as she was, and you can't do things for people, people stop wanting you around.
That's something she'd learnt in her time in man's world. How people prioritize function to the point of anything other than that recognized as failure, deserving of isolation and exile. But it still surprised her.
She wished now that she had asked the woman her name. Diana liked to remember people she met here, so that no matter how big a threat she braved, or how fast her life got, she wouldn't forget them. The people.
The woman told Diana she didn't get visitors, lived in a home, had a few friends in there, not many. She liked music and flowers, and especially, books. Any genre.
Diana would get her something good, when she visited.
She didn't tell her she would, but she had to.
Diana would.
Diana missed her mother, Hippolyta.
She would never forget Hippolyta's perfume, her eyes, watching Diana, scolding, loving. Her hair, the smell of it, the thickness.
Diana didn't know why she held on to those memories. Those feelings, as though it would ever change. Her mother's hair would remain as black as hers, her skin as smooth as it always was.
She didn't know how it'd feel to see her mother's hair become white. There were some things that made Diana feel undeniably abnormal compared to others, places she could never connect to others in. This was one. But, she supposed, maybe others would prefer to be in her place. Not knowing.