>>22171293In a well-worn pencil case covered in pride flag stickers, nestled between a flamboyantly bisexual highlighter and a pansexual ruler, lived Emery, the most nonbinary eraser to ever erase. Their casing was a sleek, holographic swirl of pink, white, blue, black, and yellow—because why settle for just one flag when you could embody the entire spectrum of gender chaos?
But despite their aggressively queer aesthetic, Emery wasn’t happy. Every day, they watched the mechanical pencils—sharp, efficient, and so effortlessly cool. With their metallic bodies and satisfyingly clicky mechanisms, they were everything Emery wasn’t. They could create. They could define. They could leave their mark on the world.
And Emery? Emery just… erased.
“I should’ve been born a mechanical pencil,” they lamented one day, dramatically flopping onto the case’s fuzzy interior. “I want to be bold. To be sharp. To—”
“Babe, what are you even talking about?” interrupted Glitter, a fabulous, genderfluid gel pen who had been through every identity crisis imaginable. Their ink was a rainbow gradient, because of course it was.
Emery groaned. “I just feel like I’d be more important if I could actually create something instead of just fixing mistakes.”
Glitter clicked their cap on and off in thought. “Oh, sweetie. You don’t just ‘fix mistakes.’ You liberate people from their bad ideas. You give them second chances. Without you, everyone would be stuck with their first drafts, and trust me, nobody’s first draft is good.”
Emery blinked. “I mean… I guess.”
