Loser!, her heart whispered back.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Originally Posted by 3894

Struggling free, her blue eyes blazing, she faced them furiously, let out a long, audible breath.

"I hereby make Loser!" she said, triumph in every syllable.

Her words echoed in the sudden silence. All eyes were on this place in time, this threshold, this Post.

The reverberations ended, and the hall burst into applause. Dozens, then hundreds of hands, all clapping, the noise in echoes dissolving into an almost clacking noise, a clacking of deft keyboard movements. Congratulations sounded in the voice of these hands, in empathic dialogue and semicolons paired with end parentheses, in the rooms of her beloved colleagues across the world.

Congratulations, Helen.