I Don't Even Care, I'm Making A Post About Retro Game Con 😌 I Had SUCH An Amazing Time And Can't Wait

Visiting an old friend or something

"it's been a year, why are you still posting about him" because larian put the line "one night he tells you that these six months of happy memories are the counterweight to 200 years of misery" in their fucking game

Gale worrying about Finnick and Katniss liking eachother- meanwhile the two of them have people on stand by to sedate them and are just aggressively knotting their shared therapy rope while they talk about Peeta and Annie in between naps

HI!!! Back with chapter three!!! All feedback welcome 😌

tw: mentions of death, murder, depressive symptoms

Ch. 3

May sat at her desk, her head weighing heavy in her hands. She didn’t need to look towards the paintings and sculptures adorning the walls and mantle; every inch of this room was known to her like the back of her own hand. She spent hours upon hours here, possibly entire lifetimes. After her father fell, the duchy of Ilucia rallied around her, looking to the only remaining legitimate heir. They loved her father—revered him, almost. There was a strict way about the man when it came to keeping things running, making sure jobs were filled and trades were made. They would say he was a kind man who knew how to speak in a way that made other’s listen. He ruled here through a combined force of love and fear, managing to balance the two in a way that allowed their family to remain influential in a time when Dukes and Duchess’s were finding their heads rolling across the wooden floor.

As she lifted her head, laying it back on the chair behind her and taking a deep breath, she found herself looking at the chair across from the desk. How many times had she sat there? How many glasses of brandy did she watch the man down? How many bruises had faded over the time since his death?

Her mind didn’t travel here often—at least, not anymore. There was no use in thinking of all the things you’d never be able to speak of. Gripping the arm of the chair until her knuckles turned white, May found herself wondering what a man like him would have done in a situation like this.

He’d never allow himself in a situation like this to begin with, she thought, toying with the idea of a monster prowling the halls of the manor while her father was still above ground. If only.

There’s something to be said of the burning urge May felt regarding her rule of the duchy. It had nothing to do with pride; she wasn’t proud of what her father built, nor his father before him. The countless hours of preparing in the feminine arts and learning to be the daughter her father required of her. It was like she wasn’t meant to be spoken to or asked questions but only looked at by prospective husbands to further the financial stability of the Ilucia. It was a simple life.

Simplicity was a gift May was never to receive again. The day she found herself groveling at the feet of a witch in the mud was the last time she would ever know what that word truly meant, even if she didn’t know it at the time. By the Winds and Waters, though, did she know it now.

There was a lot she had to learn in quite a short period of time, her motivation pushing her with a desire she hadn’t ever felt before. There was a certain weight that came with responsibility, one that she found herself becoming comfortable under. Finally, there was a purpose for her, one beside what her father had created.

But this isn’t where she thought she’d end up. There was very little about life that May understood, even after years of serving her duchy; she felt like something was still wrong. The trade was going well, bolstering the economy, creating plenty of work for all her people. The militarized approach to running the area has taken quite well over the last few months, as well, with all of her men supporting the change. There would always be the problems of ruined crops or overdue taxes, but things were well and stable, thanks to May.

But something was wrong. Something had been wrong since the day of her coronation: this pounding that never seemed to dissipate, but got quieter the less she focused on it. This screaming force begging her to follow it’s sound, only for May never to locate the source. Something was deeply wrong, and she didn’t know where to start looking when it came to fixing it.

Running her hand against the smooth grain of the desk, she felt more aware of the feeling of the chair beneath her, the seat of what came before her now cradling what was once a scared little girl. Looking upon the office that had barely changed since it became hers, she found herself wondering what it all would be like if they knew; if they really knew of what had happened to him, what she had done. No matter how many times she played it again in her mind, she never stopped feeling proud of it, even when every fiber of her being was telling her that guilt was the only way forward.

She was beside herself as she slowly came to her feet, shuffling over the creaking floor towards the door. As she looked back behind her, towards the hearth she was just moments ago sitting before, she felt rage being stoked within her. Things were starting to crack in a way that everyone else could see. And what of when they started asking questions? No part of the truth would ever escape her lips. It couldn’t.

She couldn’t tell you how long she stood there wrestling with emotions she felt she shouldn’t have, and yet as the sun started to peek over the horizon, bathing the office in shades of oranges and pinks as it shone through the window, May’s throat constricted and sweat started to bead on her brows. Her fists clenched at her sides, breath hitching behind her tongue as she struggled to get the words out.

Quiet squeals left her lips, the whimper she made doing nothing but embarrassing her in the empty room. It didn’t matter how hard of a breath she put behind it; it didn’t matter how hard she prayed or to what God. There would be no answers where she searched for them; there would be no voice when she dared to scream.

~

The sun was bright, bouncing from each full leaf and meeting the ground with a kiss. The birds sang along with the babbling rhythm of the brook, lulling May into a calmness she hadn’t felt for too long. Someone so young wasn’t meant to bear the things she wore, and yet she wore them nonetheless.

“Do you think they’d ever let me come to the manor?” Oryn quipped, tossing a stone from the bank off into the river, watching the waves swallow it.

May sat a bit straighter, looking towards her. “The Witches?” she scoffed. “Absolutely not.” She swallowed the lump forming in her throat, struggling to hold it in.

Oryn sighed, shoulders sinking low. “It was a stupid question,” they said, picking up another small stone.

May scooted a bit closer to her friend, taking off her shoes and letting her feet dip into the river. “You aren’t missing much, anyway.”

They nod, taking a moment to think before speaking again, voice heavy with something May couldn’t quite place. “I won’t know that until I see for myself. Besides, you talk so much of your brother, I’d like to meet him, eventually.”

May found herself laughing. “My brother? You and him… you’re different,” she smiled, meeting Oryn’s gaze. “I don’t think he would… well, I don’t know. I won’t say you’ll never meet him, but I’ll never take him here. He’d never come.”

Oryn nodded. They didn’t take offense; the way they lived here with the Witches wasn’t something that everybody would understand. Maureen told them that time and time again.

“Would he want to kill them?” Oryn asked, cocking her head the way she’s seen May do when she asks a question with a nonchalant air.

May’s brows furrowed as she turned her gaze down, watching her feet in the water. “Probably,” she said, “People don’t really know the Witches.”

“What do they call them again? Out in town.”

“Hags,” May said, meeting Oryn’s gaze again. “But they’re not.”

“I know.” And she did know that. Truly.

“They’re good. Good women, good people.”

“I know,” Oryn said, their voice ringing clearer with conviction. “Do you?”

May caught herself staring off into wherever the river went, down towards the horizon and off into some land somewhere that she didn’t know, off to an ocean she’d never see. “I trust them.” she finally said, looking for something she’d never find.

“But your brother wouldn’t,” Oryn stated.

“No, he wouldn’t. But it’s because he doesn’t know them. He is… strict in his convictions. I doubt he’d let himself.” She sighed. “People are afraid of things they don’t know.”

Oryn nodded, letting their hand sit softly atop May’s. May let a content smile splay on her lips, still staring off into nothing and everything.

“He was thinking of leaving, actually,” May said, letting herself speak about something she’d been holding in for a while. She took her feet out of the river, the cold water making her feet numb for a moment, grass and mud sticking to them as she tucked them under herself and turned to face Oryn.

“Leaving?” Oryn turned, too, meeting May’s serious gaze.

“Oryn,” May started, “Do you know what war is?”

~

There was a distrust in May’s men. It wasn’t against her, necessarily, but against what they knew she didn’t say. Standing behind her and glorifying her name was something none of them had ever thought of twice. But Alec, feeling a new sense of bewilderment, found himself asking more questions than he had answers to.

The dank cellar was full from floor to ceiling with books bigger than he’d ever seen. As he made his way from one row to the next, he saw words he didn’t recognize bound by skin in colors he’d never seen. He didn’t know specifically what May wanted him to search for besides some sort of mention of a monster like the one they saw that night

“No,” Alec said to himself, “Not monster. That man,” he mumbled, letting his fingers trail along the spines of the tomes, leaving a line amidst the dust in his wake. There was knowledge hiding here that no one knew, and the boy didn’t know how he’d go about finding it. He wasn’t even sure what it was.

He was young to handle any guilt, but not so young that he didn’t understand it. He thought of death more often than not in these passing days, wondering how responsible he should feel and whose fault it was and what he could have done differently, if anything at all. He didn’t think he’d find any answers for any of those questions here, but the others… maybe.

He didn’t sleep the following night, nor the night after that. It was harder to sleep when he’d close his eyes and see that thing hiding in the darkness, ready to rip another door from its hinges. First, it scared him. He knew his father hated that he harbored so much fear, but his mother made sure he knew that he was still just a boy; it was more than normal, but expected. A boy didn’t become a man overnight—he wouldn’t be able to conquer those fears from a meagre month in the militia. You don’t just grow up, all at once.

The fear turned into something else, though; the other thing his father told him never to harbor. Curiosity. He’d been on enough hunts with his brothers to know what beasts lurk in the shadows, and this certainly isn’t one that they’ve ever heard of. It didn’t matter how long he wracked his brain of the stories of great hunts and beast slayers, there was nothing about this thing that could point to its origin. The scouts of the area have an extensive list of any and all beasts that they’ve been able to track and hunt locally, making sure to dispatch of any of the less… safe species. But this wasn’t a beast. It was a man.

When the Duchess had made her announcement to the staff of a prolonged guest taking up stead in one of the unused rooms, there was a stifle of what could only be excitement amongst her men. There hadn’t been a single visitor to the manor since she’d become the standing Duchess.

There were very few who opposed her. Although not in direct opposition, Alec’s father wasn’t one to take his dismissal lightly. May shed her father’s cohort quickly, making it her first proper action when she became standing Duchess. They all thought she’d come crawling back to the group of old men, looking for some sort of guidance in what to do next and how to help her people. Their anger was mellow at first, masked by their grief for their former duke and, not too long thereafter, his proper heir.

Alec didn’t find much of anything on that first day in the archives. He looked from one book to another, trying to find the ones that would talk more about beasts and monsters and where they come from. Everything he found terrified him, but none as much as he originally had. His thoughts ran rampant with the things the Duchess could be planning or where she could have picked up someone like him in the first place. Why, of all the things she could do—of all the men she could recruit—would she go searching for something like that?

She must be planning something. Something big.

He concluded that whatever it was, it must be something worth more than the lives of all the men she could lose trying to tame it.

-

“I’ve no idea what the fuck to do,” May mumbled, her foot bouncing with anticipation as she starred upon the idol, sat shiny and untouched upon a shelf nothing else would ever grace. She didn’t pray often, and never in the way she was supposed to. There was meant to be a certain etiquette to prayer; quiet and unadorned speech, modest robes, offerings, the list could go on and on. Most people of May’s generation and those that followed disregarded more and more of the rules and regulations with each passing year, finding themselves making their own relationships with Gods that many barely knew, if ever making a relationship with any of them at all. May’s father was a man of appearances, hiring gardeners and masons and carpenters to add constant flourishes to his gardens and shrines. After his death, her brother slowly forgot about all the groundskeepers and by the time May was the standing heir, they were all dismissed.

She found herself sitting in front of a shrine shrouded with natural growth. The thick branches of the bushes held themselves tight against the rotting wooden ornamentations, the stone platform and shelves encrusted with years of mildew and moss. The thick pool of algae swam atop what used to be a fountain that sprayed scented mist, eating whatever fell amongst the scum. She found a beauty in the disheveled look; admired the strength of nature reclaiming something that was once so carefully manicured.

She crouched over a wooden stump that was so old it had started to petrify here in the shade, hands clasped tight and brows furrowed. She looked towards the idol, lessons of the Great Winds flashing through her mind. Her father made sure she was schooled properly, even if only to make her a good potential suitor. Although the masculine arts were out of her reach until she found herself the standing Duchess, May liked to think that, in another life, she may have been a true scholar. Not here, though. Not now.

As she gazed up towards the polished clay vase, she wondered if something made in a man’s image—in a man’s hands—could ever truly be a vessel for communicating with the Gods. All the questions in such nature started occurring not long after her mother’s death, but with the beatings she received when she voiced them, she thought it best to push them far from her mind. Now, though, the doubt and uneasiness of not being an honest believer started to nag at her.

This was stupid, she thought, remembering the times she prayed for first her mother’s soul, and then her father’s. She didn’t bother to pray for her brother’s—she sullied his soul far beyond repair. There was nothing prayer could have done for him.

She sat up straighter, sucking in a deep breath and setting her feet firmly on the ground. She tried with everything in her to think hard enough of something that would help her, something to steer her in a direction that would tell her what to do with Oryn. What to do about the trail of death that seemed to follow them; the responsibility and guilt not weighing on her the way she knew it should. She bought them here. She is the one who has her men’s blood on her hands. So why did she feel so relieved?

She’s not unused to blood. Her own, her men’s, her family’s… But those all carried a weight to them that she could feel; one that kept her in a state of hostility, never knowing whose death she’d be responsible for next. There was a numbness that came with it, the last several years serving to alienate her subjects from her more and more. It wasn’t the way she was supposed to think. The value of life is something she used to cherish; something the Waters and Winds were supposed to help spread throughout mankind, if we would accept them into our lives. Feeling the guilt and pain was all a part of the Natural Way, molding them—the meagre supplicants of their Gods—into a warrior that was fit to battle the Natural Chaos that the world had to offer. There was a balance to be maintained.

Her prayer was bitter and full of a vain desire to understand oneself—a prayer the Gods most likely wouldn’t answer. And yet as she held the idol in her gaze, the sun glinting off the glaze of the vase, she felt like she had finally admitted something long overdue.

She closed her eyes, letting the few rays of sun sneaking through the overgrowth caress her skin, before grabbing a pebble from the long-forgotten footpath beside her and hurling it at the vase, the stone hitting the ceramic with a satisfying clunk as it split and shattered to pieces. Whatever birds were lounging in the nearby bushes and trees took that as their cue to depart, leaving her feeling alone in a forgotten shrine that no longer had a purpose.

She stood, stretching her arms and taking a few more big, deep breaths. Good throw. She knew she wasn’t going to find any answers here. Hell, she wasn’t going to find any answers anywhere. She had that little boy—what was his name? Alex? Alvin? —rummaging through what must be years and years' worth of tall tales and nonsense. She knew he wouldn’t find anything useful, but she needed to make all of her men feel as though they were doing something that was. The last thing she needed was a reason for her men to fall apart and start rallying against her. It was up to her to give them purpose, no matter how unimportant it truly was in the end.

May started making her way down the stone steps and back towards the manor, her shoes hitting the ground with purpose. He needs to learn.

Oryn had spent the past week sulking in their room, blinds drawn, and door locked. As May walked from one side of the manor grounds to the other, it was determination fueled by anger that flooded her veins. There was too much being hidden, not enough known. She found herself thinking back to her first brush with death. She understood what it meant long before her mother died… a childhood cat, maybe? Or was it her grandfather? She didn’t remember. When was Oryn’s?

pelican town, ‘72

How the gentle wind,

Beckons through the trees,

As autumn colours fall.

qi

Me, unfortunately 🥲

most unstable girl you know: i need to get a masters degree

Me: *passing by Caroline and hands her one of the Horseradishes I happen to be carrying atm*

Caroline, for some reason:

. . . how the flip am I supposed to respond to that.