[Michelle]

I know it's horribly outdated. I'll fix it eventually.

[center]I was sitting in this tavern earlier, on the floor in a corner, the night before I got here, and I don’t remember much. I was drinking some sort of… piss, of... of course, and I had my quill and my book, but I couldn’t write anything. I couldn’t, like the words had just… left. Made their descent into the abyss, or rather they just had fucked off out of existence, or… something. I was on the floor and this man stumbles in and he’s young, and by young I mean… you know, younger than I am and he’s off his head, and by that I mean he’s the… direct contrary opposite of a Lucin princess. He’s just… flailing around like a fish out of water, and he’s trying to find his feet, so he looks for the wall to lean on and he backs into my corner, but of course I’m sitting and he’s the bladdered direct contrary opposite of a Lucin princess, so he doesn’t see me. Initially, I thought he’d work out that I was you know, there, but then his arse was properly… properly in my face. So I say, “Excuse me,” because I’m too cordial to say anything else to a fucking arse in my fucking face, “but I don’t think you know I exist.”

…

He turns around, and his face is just… beet fucking red. I thought blood was just going to gush right out of his ears, but low and behold it doesn’t and he somehow manages to lug himself out and up the stairs to a new spot. And that’s… that’s the fucking end of me, that is.
It’s come to this.[/center]

Spoiler

[center]Resistance was completely ineffectual with her. We loved her, so of course she accomplished this via the way she looked at us, with the same dimpled smile. What I loved most about her was how she would come up and hug me completely unprompted and say “I love you”. Who could resist that? It shouldn’t be surprising to say that her very presence was enough to leave me waving the white flag… or more equivalent, I should say, to a thick, bubbling pool of just… goop. What I did find surprising was that me and Jacaranda had her at eighteen… and that’s… that’s not particularly troubling, but in the six years since she was born I’ve fucked a lot of things, and somehow by the skin of my teeth I’ve managed to come out, for the most part, intact.
“Can I sit in your lap? Tell me a story! Show me how you made this book! Will you come and play with me? Papa, I wet the bed…”
It wasn’t… Not my sort of… field of expertise, you know?

Jacaranda believed otherwise, of course, and allegedly I took to her like a duck takes to water. She said that’s one of the things she likes most about me. That I like people – and I know that’s quite the statement to make when in the midst of a civil war after forty odd years of slavery and a completely different war, but there’s… something beautiful in that. Something beautiful about humanity and its… perpetual struggle, its inescapable downfalls, and while I’m sure I sound like a nancy boy and that a lot of people won’t understand that, she does. She knows me. People also, by some means, like me too, which is surprising, but again Jac disagrees. People like me because I’m gentle, she said. I hadn’t the foggiest clue that people thought I was gentle…
She likes that I’m gentle too, she told me. She also liked my eyebrows, which she called ‘fuzzy caterpillars’ and that very nearly steers me bonkers with love for her, for her eyes and nose, her smile, her splendour, and her hips and her… everything.

…

She disagreed with me a lot. We’ve argued over everything, but that’s not to discount our marriage completely, because I don’t mean the aggressive sort of arguing. It was playful, or even at times, intellectual.

…

You know, the interesting and surprising thing about marigolds is that you can pick the seeds… the seeds… when the flower dies, you can take the bud apart and the seeds are inside it. Hundreds of them, growing under the actual flower part of the flower, inside the bud like roots. You can replant them, but really you don’t have to because they just settle in any soil they can find and grow after you sprinkle them about, similar to bonemeal but you know… slower. Somehow, it was proof to her, that there was something like Rhise… you know. “It’s like there’s life after death,” she said, “and there’s something more than us that ensures that”. I think she’s wrong. I told her. “I think you’re wrong,” I said, “it just sounds like a species of plant ensuring it doesn’t face extinction.” She of course, disagreed because “plants don’t think like that”. I told her, “for someone so educated and well-read, Jac, you every so often talk like there’s just clouds in your head.”

…

She loved me. We’d argue for ages, and she never got too cross. She was absolute perfection, after all. She was never even slightly bothered that I came from… which was surprising…

…

My parents were passionate, and I don’t mean “I have eight brothers and sisters” sort of passionate, but I speculate that would apply there too. They were in the resistance before and during Veld, and they lived out in the woods, and this was you know, before living in the woods just meant you cut trees, eat berries and hunt for a living. They’d get passionate over any fucking cause, which was why they ended up in the resistance and how they managed to have two kids full of beans before… you know… me. My mother would cry if you left a cupboard open, which is, in point of fact, something I inherited from her but now I’m embarrassed I said that, and my father… well, he’s... a mufti soldier who is perpetually narky. He used to tell stories about the war and all… all that, and I didn’t really fancy them but I liked stories because when you live in a house - that’s bordering on a fucking hole in the ground - in a village with a completely skint family of eleven… you’re going to like stories. He taught me to write too, which is fundamentally the commencement of everything for me. And I liked him. I liked his company. You know how sometimes the company of other men is just in some ways... kindly? I mean I don’t mean that to sound… like anything… other than. You know.

…

When me and Jac met, we were… how long ago was it… we were sixteen. I was travelling the mainland because I decided that I’d do my mother a favour at fourteen and just clear off out of the nest and out of her hair. Is it… terrible to say I doubt I was missed? I don’t mean to discount them, it’s just that they had sod all. You know, more children than they could… afford.
I was travelling the mainland, and I was, at least ostensibly at the time, a bit of a beggar and I’m embarrassed about this, but I was shit at everything except telling stories like my father and writing for people who couldn’t. So, that was my job and I’m travelling about, and I come to this large estate and there’s a farm there, and a woman tending to some peach trees. I’m not sure if it was the peaches or Jacaranda, but I walk on over and try to look all ace by leaning over the fence, and I say to her, “those peaches look ripe”, and I’ve dropped the clanger here because she’s weeding around the roots of the tree, meaning she’s bent over, but of course I’m too thick to notice so I add in, “ripe enough to eat”.
…How am I still alive?
She turns around at me, and she’s got her lips pursed in that sort of way that says she’s looking at a numpty or an absolute git, but she says to me rather curtly, “they’re not”.

…

Forty-two profuse apologies later and I’ve somehow fucking got myself a job at the farm and a bed in a barn, and I meet her father who tells me that “if you try any funny business with my Jacaranda, you’ll be like a Xit in the purge”. Sometimes I wonder if he was serious. He never caught me out with Jac, so I never found out if he was, but the things they did back then… I was around three, maybe four or five when it was big and I think that’s why… I get a tad squeamish when I see insides…

We eloped to a city named Southsage when we were seventeen, and this may be surprising to most but it was her idea. She wanted to travel, but when we realised the war was only getting worse we decided to stay in a Southsage for, you know… protection. We buy a house with the money Jac’s got and you know, I started doing okay. This will sound stupid but I finally got myself a proper job. I became a bookbinder’s apprentice and after about a year I started working on my own. I barely got any real coin for it, but it was more stable pay than writing… but I still wrote, of course, whenever I had the time.

Ann was born nine months after the wedding night, and that’s a go figure there, really. I mean, I was born nine months after Veld, so… it happens. It happens, and there was a moment where I thought Jacaranda would die in her labour because I always freeze up and panic in these moments, and I’m a bit embarrassed, because in that moment I found myself going to It. I was you know, holding Jac’s hand, but it was more akin to having my hand broken because… she’s pushing a baby out of… you know, out of there and whilst I’m doing all this and telling her to breathe I was praying to her god – who I don’t even fucking think is there – talking to her god in my head… “We can afford to lose the baby, but I don’t think I’ll survive without Jac.”

…

I love her. With every bit of my curious existence.
I love her so much it hurts.

…

On Ann’s sixth birthday I remember Jac called me into our bedroom because she said she had something she wanted to show me, a-and there she was. Completely... starkers. She was… just the thought that I was somehow married to her, and that we had our little girl… and we thought of having another one, another child, but then we just looked at Ann and we... we realised 'we’re happy'. We’ve got all our little routines, like how I do the cleaning and Jac goes to the market, but it’s like we fucking love them, rather than finding them what? Restricting? And we just want Ann. We just want her. She’s clever, she’s funny, she’s very, very pretty. She’s my little princess, she’s Jac’s sidekick. They stand a little a ways from me, sizing me up and making their little quips about me and when they know they’ve gone too far Jac bakes a cake and Ann comes up and hugs me, because the thought of making me genuinely upset…

We thought about going to the Forbidden Lands because the adventure’s still in Jac and the civil war’s not over there either, and... there are barely any fucking trees in Southsage, and they cover the sky up with walls and towers, but the fact of it all is that we don’t have the money and the sailing wouldn't be fair on Ann, so we tell ourselves to wait and see. Just... wait and see.

There’s a market in Southsage, and it’s the most… alive place ever. The air’s thick with scent and the colours are lavish and the sounds are just dizzying. Jacaranda heads there once a week to trade off whatever she’s grown in the garden that we’re not eating, and she trades off my books and gets me restoration jobs because I’m always embarrassed to talk and she’s the queen of sales, so she leaves me at home with Ann. Sometimes we do things together like play with her dolls but sometimes she just… She goes off into her own little world. What she’s doing in all actuality is she’s talking to herself, but I just like to watch her. She goes into the street just outside the house and does this, and I’m never too worried because I can see her from my desk through the window as I’m working, and the street’s always empty so she’s not… you know, a bother to anyone.

…

One day I just decide to ask her, “Which one is It?” And she says, “What?” So I ask again, “If there’s something, which one is It? Is It Rhise or Umbriae, or is It more traditional like Isohel and Sulena, because every time someone thinks they’ve found out who or what It is, someone else says they’ve got the truth.” She’s clearly given it some thought before, so she isn’t taken by surprise. “None of them,” she says, and she does this little nod of the head that means she thinks she’s won. “Whatever you think It is, It’s the direct contrary opposite to that. And whatever you think It is less likely to be, than It’s most likely that.” I ask her if that means her god’s actually her mother and she tells me not to be a bloody git and so I say “well if you can’t tell me what It is or whatever It looks like, if you don’t know and if everyone’s got their own idea of what It’s like, how do you know It’s not just an idea? How do you know you’re right?”

…

I’m redoing the coptic stitching for the binding of an old rune engineering manual, and I look up through the window and I can see Ann playing, and she’s doing a bit of a run. She’s got a stick from the garden and she’s sort of being a guard fighting off a dusk, and I think she’s winning – I’m not too certain but she’s really into it. She’s really into it, and I can watch her as this wave, this stampede, this explosion of people... happens, and they’re rioting. They’re yelling about and running in all sorts of directions, so they don’t see her, but I can just manage to make her out between the gaps of human as she falls over and she tries to stand and get her footing back, but in trying to get her footing she’s too panicked by all the sudden people, and so she slips and falls again and she smacks her head on the cobble road, and they trample her down.

And I’m seeing all this happening, but I can’t hear it over the roar of the crowd… this roar, which is more of a dull hum in comparison to this scream that I hear as well, this scream that’s right in my ear. It’s not a high pitched scream like a woman either, but more of a wretched, throaty scream and I’m looking around to see who’s screaming until I realise that it’s me. I was screaming.
The riot’s cleared a little. I run out into the street. No matter how much you love someone, you’re going to step back at a pool of their blood. I go to her, and pick her up from the road. She’s warm, which is surprising, and unconscious. Her ribs have been crushed, and the bones have punctured through her skin and her hair’s all matted and chewed up by all the blood and dirt, and by the way her arms and legs kind of awkwardly flop I can tell they’re broken as well, and her skull’s… and her face…

I heard later on that it was all caused by the ration system. When Jac and me first came to Southsage they had some surprising taxes due to the civil war, but to make up for it we had protection and they gave out rations. It was… really some sort of nowt amount of bread for every adult and child in the household. We didn’t mind it because really we were… well, skint already but on that day, they had cut the rations and raised the taxes to increase the war effort, and the news had just gotten out to the markets which created absolute anarchy.
Her blood’s cooling and sticking to my hands.

I start to carry her all the way to the nearest healer and people are watching us, from a distance of course, and I’m kind of aware that I’m kind of crying, and that I’m not blinking, and that I look like… fuck, fuck I don’t know. And I turn into a new street and I realise I’m completely lost, so I just turn back for the house and as I’m carrying her and running through the front door, I bang her head against the doorframe and her neck makes this sickening crack and I’m apologising to her, which is fucking thick of me, and I’m telling her that I’m sorry for banging her head but really, I’m thinking, “well, fuck it now, she’s fucking gone now, what does it fucking matter now, might as well drag her by the fucking ankle!”

…

This… shattered form.
This… mangled slab of flesh, this slab of meat and… air.

…

We buried her outside Southsage. The city which, in a roundabout way, killed her, which was a bit... But we couldn’t wait and she deserved the peace. I had wanted her cremated, but Jac wanted burial and I wasn't going to argue with her… she had just lost a daughter.
Here's something queer… hope I'm not too morbid, but occasionally I wonder what her body looks like now, in that tiny coffin. Desiccated? What?
I pile the dirt on and each thud of each load on that coffin’s like a beat of my heart - which I can feel in my ears - and all I can think of is how that coffin shouldn’t be so small, and how I shouldn’t be burying her. Jacaranda’s sitting on the grass, and she’s absolutely broken and the sounds she makes… But neither of us can really look at each other, or speak to each other…
You know what the cruellest thing I ever did to anybody was?

The sun’s setting. It’s the ugliest fucking sunset I’ve ever seen. The sky’s this yellow and rotting curve and the clouds are flaking. Jac reaches into her pocket, and she takes out about five dead marigold buds, and she sprinkles the seeds over the grave and the wind blows the seeds away.
I turn to her, and I say…

…
…
…

And I stay with that flaking sunset instead of chasing after her. I stay until the sky rots through to pitch black, and I have the complete inability to cry. It was at that moment that I started talking to myself, like Ann. I can’t fucking stop for the fucking life of me. I’m even fucking doing it now…
I get back to the house and it’s an empty mess… Either Jac’s gone and legged it with everything, or I left the door open and it was looted in the riot. Probably both.
The wind’s a seashell in my ear.

It’s been a month. It’s been a month, and I… I’m still talking to myself.
I can’t remember what it was like holding her. When I try, I just see it all over again.
There’s a lurching in my stomach.

…

I want to acknowledge that I’ve become so invisible I’ve managed to climb into the underbelly of some cargo ship to the Forbidden Lands undetected. Don’t even think the rats have seen me yet.

…

I can hear a laugh above me and it has absolutely no joy.
It’s come to this.[/center]

Author’s Notes:
This is really just Percival talking to himself, so of course he’s not going to be completely explicit. This is a section where the explicit details are given.

What was the cruellest thing Percival ever did?

He said this in a moment where his wife was very vulnerable, though in Percival’s defence they were both very vulnerable. That’s why it was cruel, and that’s why she left him.

Why did he leave home at fourteen?
Percy’s twenty-four, meaning he would’ve been just thirteen when the civil war began. He had an elder brother and sister at ages fifteen and eighteen respectively who had already left home, meaning it was Percival, his mother (Arielle) and the remaining six siblings. Being an ex-soldier, Percival’s father (Mort) rejoined war when his father’s home city was under attack. With his mother struggling, Percival helped her for a year, and when she seemed to be going smoothly he decided it was his time to leave so she would have one less child to feed.

Why didn’t Percival do anything when Ann was being trampled?
He froze up because he isn’t good in emergency situations.

What is Percival’s opinion on Xitians and Lucins?
Mostly indifference. He was told stories by his parents, who were likely to be biased due to passion and being on the resistance, but he also witnessed the lynching of a fair few Xitians in his childhood which made him squirm. He recognises them as a bit scary, but he also knows they’re human. He’d probably avoid one if he saw one. Lucins are okay, but are probably also to be avoided. However, he finds the powers of both races fascinating.

How did Percival acquire his bookbinding skills/writing skills?
He became a bookbinder’s apprentice shortly after moving to the city to support his family. He did this for about a year and a half, and then went onto being a bookbinder himself. It’s also implied by Percival’s monologue that Jacaranda came from a wealthy, educated background. She was essentially Percy’s access to more literacy knowledge.

Currently: Staying behind at the fortress.

Percival
Male
28
Mesalian
Bookbinder, Writer

Appearance:
Overall, he’s unremarkable and plain. If you were passing Percival on the street, it’d take effort to notice him. However, there’s a gentle and warm quality to him; a softness, maybe a vulnerability, but somehow his masculinity doesn’t seem too compromised. His body and face are smooth and just average, accompanied by slight visible muscle in his limbs – but again, it’s unremarkable. He’s not chiselled at all. The veins in his arms jut out slightly. He has short ash brown hair that sits above his ears, with a thin fringe which is brushed over to the side messily. There's a small bald patch on the left of his head, where he cut off a chunk of hair that Ezri put in a hair wrap. He has a pair of deep brown eyes which are also generally unremarkable unless you’re staring directly at them, and pasty skin. His nose, and nasal bone creases are quite prominent and large – so are his ears, but more due to how his hair sits above them. His eyebrows are quite dark and thick, but narrow and not too bushy. He sports slight stubble. His hands are calloused, but smooth. He’s around 175 centimetres tall, and that’s 5 feet and 9 inches. Percival wears the worn out, humble all-blacks of a bookbinder: a long-sleeved tunic, some trousers and a pair of long black boots. He also has a belt around his upper waist, with a flask and a sheath for a bookbinder’s knife. He smells like ink, glue, and blood.

Personality: [Needs updating.]
Percival is an observer of humanity, as opposed to being a server of humanity. He’s the fly on the wall, and he’s quite content with it. This is because he enjoys his ability to see artistic value in everything, including people and humanity, which he sees as “tragically beautiful”. This is what keeps him from complete misanthropy, as he likes both the good and bad of humanity. Generally, he enjoys complexity. Of course, this also makes him quite prone to over thinking and finding obscure meanings that are a stretch from the truth, or don’t actually exist. He’s a sensitive person, and somewhat naive, but not to the point where he doesn’t see bad things happening – he can see bad things and can even feel affected, but also appreciates their beauty, as if someone were to make a work of art. For example, Percival would see tragic but meaningful beauty in people ignoring a homeless man on the street. However, due to the loss of his family, Percival’s lost his passion for things, mostly keeping them to himself in order to avoid conflict.

Percival is mostly like that on the inside and it’s very rare to see that side of him unless you happen to read something he’s written, or you hear him talking to himself (see the monologue backstory). When he’s talked to, he’s quiet and even seems to have low self-esteem. You’re most likely to find him stuttering and blabbering on, and to know when you’re close to Percival when he doesn’t stutter around you like a blithering idiot. He’s nervous around people, because he’s afraid of conflict and deeply offending people like he did to his wife. Because of this, he sees socialisation as a minefield. This avoidance of conflict is Percival’s major flaw; he’s often an anxious, passive doormat, but the upside to this (as his wife said) is that he’s gentle, or a kind and forgiving person. That being said, he’s likely to also be a person who would ignore a homeless man, but this would be a conscious effort as Percival would be doing it more out fear of conflict. As stated in the beginning, Percival is an observer of humanity, but he has no real interest in serving it.

He’s got a natural soft spot for kids, though he finds them painful as they’re a reminder of his own loss. What he particularly likes about children is of course their occasional insightfulness and how they’re an “entirely different aspect of humanity”. Occasionally, he will adopt a particular trait he admires in someone, and this is sometimes a conscious decision, but also can be subconscious. For example, he has adopted his daughter’s habit of talking to himself both consciously and subconsciously. In a way, this is some strange method of self-improvement for him. Despite his sensitive nature, he has a “complete inability to cry” due to the trauma of his prior loss. Percival’s an awkward mix between being comfortable with himself as a complex and flawed human, and absolutely hating himself. “I am a man crippled by regrets.”

He dislikes marigolds, peaches, jacaranda flowers, blood, the roar of a crowd, running, faith, the words “fuzzy caterpillars”, being called "Percykins" and loose bristles from his brushes when he is gluing stuff. He likes talking to himself, using quotes, the smell of glue, new brushes, the usefulness of a bookbinder’s knife, waxed thread, ink stains, the word "splendour" and dancing (though he won’t admit it). He doesn’t really have specific favourite things, because he over thinks his decisions. He’s an ISFP.

Physicality:
- Walks with a slight slouch, lead by his head
- Eyes wide, head shaking slightly as when upset
- Unfit; puffed very easily
- Talks with his hands when confident
- Directionless pacing and shifting on the spot when nervous
- Drags hands down his face to relieve tension
- Tries to make himself as small as possible
- Left handed

Vocal Details:
Percival's voice is honestly quite important, because I find without it his character can appear less gentle than he is. For example, when I read what I've written for him aloud it carries a different sort of person and it definitely doesn't have the quiet vulnerability I imagine. His voice isn't particularly masculine, but it's not particularly feminine as you can still tell it's a male voice. It's soft and airy, but not necessarily quiet like Snow's. This softness is created by Percival's breathing when he talks; he breathes shallowly when he speaks, so his speech is formed in his front of his mouth. Percival also tends to blab on without stopping for breaths, particularly when nervous, so it's also like he's talking as he exhales, trying to finish his sentence before running out of breath. This also means he speaks at a brisk pace. His vocal pacing also tends to become faster when he's feeling any intense emotion - anger, happiness, sadness, fear, etc.

Because of this, Percival struggles to contain or hide his feelings about things, which in a way reflects his vulnerability. He has however become good at stopping himself from crying, however the result of this is that he often sounds like he's almost on the verge of tears at any given moment. There is also his drastic transformation around people, AKA his stutter which is the result of his typical 'freezing up' reaction to stressful situations, and the fact that he finds socialising a stressful situation. As I've stated before, when Percival is comfortable with someone, he will not stutter. As implied by the words he uses, Percival has a light Irish accent and it's certainly not stereotypical.

Theme Song:
Makkon - Hallowed Waltz

Skills and Strengths:
- Advanced book binding
- Advanced literacy and creative writing
- Moderate farming
- Moderate gardening
- Moderate childcare
- Basic numeracy
- Basic cooking
- Intelligent
- Kind

Weaknesses:
- Passive
- Lacks confidence
- No real ability to defend himself
- Fears conflict, and by extension, socialising
- Over thinks
- Hangs onto regret
- Cowardly
- Unintentionally self-absorbed
- Lacks athleticism
- Not good with emergencies

Goals:
- Move on
- Start "doing okay" again
- Try to "participate in life"
- Rejoin with the group later

Percival Talks to Himself
One
Two
Three

Relationships:

Spoiler

They'll be here when I can be bothered... @_@ Never, because fuck Harry!

[Michelle]

[center]Percival Talks to Himself
One[/center]

It’s a surprising place, really, and of course I say that because I’m fucking surprised when I’m reading a story and the hero saves the damsel and not only that, but they also get married…

What was surprising initially was just… the size of the place, you know? I mean I know people have been living on the Forbidden Lands for as long as I’ve been… well, as long as I’ve been living, but is it a terrible thing to say that I thought… it wouldn’t have been this... civilised? It’s not Southsage, and that’s not to discount it either, but it’s not… definitely not where I was born which is...
It is, in point of fact… fairly large, but not large enough for everyone to not see me and I think that’s the most surprising thing; it’s that I’m not invisible. Almost every fucking person I’ve seen has fucking seen me, and there’s something about that that’s… surprising. It’s arse about face. I think it's either small enough here for them to notice new faces, or there’s never really any new faces so they’re astonished to see them, and if I faff around enough about the place I’ll just eventually… be a shadow. A glass man.

…

I think Jac would have liked it here. I came across this tree earlier, and it was the easily the most enormous tree I’ve ever seen and it was… this will sound stupid, but something about it was telling and beautiful and I think she would’ve liked it, but as I went closer I saw that someone had been there, and there was rubble and someone had dug a hole at its roots. There’s not a solitary place in town where I can talk to myself, and there’s not even one in the fucking jungle. Every fucking direction I turn I locate someone else’s home, or hiding hole, or campsite, or fucking mansion like the complete melancholy, and the meaninglessness, and the vacuous fucking shitness of their lives is so… ubiquitous that their own space away from every-fucking-one else’s acts as some sort of solace.

…

That’s my irony for the day, and what’s more is...
I think I’m lost in this jungle.

...

Sodding nether.

[Michelle]

[center]Percival Talks to Himself
Two[/center]

Aside from remembering what it’s like to you know… hold her, what I miss the most is surprisingly the routine, which in reality isn’t so surprising when I think about it because it’s like that normally. We get used to every-bloody-thing, such as wives going to the market and making breakfast with that cheese which is a probable close relative to paper externally, but is surprisingly more internally akin to butter…
I mean, when I wake up now… sweet fuck all to do apart from dither about town. It’s fundamentally a perpetual succession where I’m skint because I can’t bookbind, and I can’t bookbind because I’m skint and can’t afford fucking… tools, or materials.

…

I got out of the jungle… you know, eventually, when I thought I was going to become dusk supper. I, by some means managed to find the mining camp and had to swim across this lake to get there. Sometimes you don’t really fathom out how deep the water is until you get in. When you’re looking at it, you see that it’s deep, but when you’re in…

…

I met this woman named… Fuck, I’ve forg- Marty, well her name’s Margretha but she tells me to call her Marty, so of course I do. What I notice about her is that she has these… complicated little patterns tattooed into her skin, and you can just see them when she moves her head a little to the side. Reminds me of my father, who had a few on his arms, and that’s when I sort of suss out that she’s… fairly old. She says she’ll carve some stone tools for me if I bind her a book, so she’s saving my arse of course, because unsurprisingly I’m fucking useless. Every-fucking-one’s always saving my fucking arse.

When you’re in the water, it’s as terrifying as anything I’ve ever seen. You go back up to the surface of course, and the idea that you actually ever thought the water wasn’t that deep seems… asinine. It’s a tad embarrassing, frankly.
How did I think I could just wade my way through it?

…

There’s an election for mayor happening at present in town, and initially I thought that would get me into shit, but it feels like… no one really cares, or they’re not going on about it because I’m a new face. I’m not whinging, but what actually got me in strife was, in actual fact, a fucking egg.
It was… a bit dodgy and I don’t want to be too cruel, but somehow it was concurrently burnt and raw, as well as slimy and gritty from eggshell. Something like dirt and blood, which was a bit…
And I tried to eat it, really I did, but it was… you know.
It was dog’s arse.

I keep thinking Captain Lapis will come after me, which is stupid but there was another man behind the bar – kind of a brewer – and he seemed to know her well… and he did not want to save my arse. So either he’s a bit of a wanker or she’s… no one could actually be that offended… yes?
Sod it. I’m not going to sleep tonight...

They wanted my story.

…
…
…

They wanted my story, and that’s the first thing I learnt about the people here. They have stories, and that’s why they’re here. I had no fucking idea what to say, so I just… got around it. What was I expected to say? Just… fuck.
I’m trying to fucking hold my self together. My skin, and the very… whatever’s left, but there’s a lurching in my stomach and there’s a fucking… hole...
There's a hole running right through my throat.
How did I think I could just come here and fucking be invisible?

[Michelle]

[center]Percival Talks to Himself
Three[/center]

It hurts because it mattered.
It mattered. That’s why it hurts.

…

She sang to her food whenever she was happy, to the fucking tune of Rhisian hymns of all the fucking things, which was Jac’s influence entirely. In actual fact, when I think about it, she sang to every-bloody-fucking-thing whenever she was happy. Hello trees, hello sun, hello smoked pigeon and... papa’s shitty oatcakes...
They were always lumpy with these clumps of flour because I mixed them like I mix glue, but notwithstanding that I think they were alright.
You know… as far as fucking oatcakes can go.

…

It’s nearly her birthday, in about a week, and I sort of haven’t left this… room.

They say grief is the language of idleness, and if they’re wrong then this is possibly another selfish act from yours truly, but I think that’s just… how it is. It’s… I can’t get out of bed because she mattered. They both mattered, so it’s not just loss. It’s regret.
When I was a child, my father…
The first thing I learnt about grief is that a grieving man shouldn’t pull out his hair. A few good years after the war of Veld and he still does it – or did it, who the fuck knows – as though somehow his baldness would make losing his war mates a better experience.

…

The longer I stay here, the more I regret and the worse it gets, but it’s like the hole’s running through my chest now and the last blooming thing I should do is work, which is a laughable idea because the only work I have is being the lap dog of Caius. The shit that happens when you try to… participate. In life.
The painful reality is that if I don’t want to starve, then I’ll have to go back and try again, and again, and again, and again… because from what I can tell by the tavern owner, and the politicians, and the pirate bartender who cooks dog’s arse eggs but mediocre steak…
I’m not fucking invisible here.

And I need to keep trying because if I’m not on the piss in a week...

…

Nothing has changed, but everything’s different.
If I know anything about life, it’s that it goes on.