little flickers of time

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Lyn𝛿is
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1,582 POSTS

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last seen Aug 25, 2023 23:48:21 GMT -5

does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker? ✯

little flickers of time Jul 15, 2019 23:40:26 GMT -5

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Post by Lyn𝛿is on Jul 15, 2019 23:40:26 GMT -5

I just want to be living as I'm dying
just like everybody here
just want to know my little flicker of time is worthwhile
and I don't know where I'm driving to
but I know I'm getting old
and there's a blessing in every moment every mile

This is an ongoing collection of miscellaneous NPC oneshots.

1. Ephrath, age 16, district four, year ??
2. Bridgit Michelson, age 17, district six, year 61

lyrics - homecoming, vienna teng

Last Edit: Sept 22, 2019 5:27:38 GMT -5 by Lyn𝛿is

"Yeah… You have to be careful when placing labels on good and evil, Celice. Never waste your anger on individuals. Always focus it on the evil within all of us."
- Lewyn, Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War

Lyn𝛿is
Capitol Resident

1,582 POSTS

Pronouns: ; DROP TABLE Gender;--
last seen Aug 25, 2023 23:48:21 GMT -5

does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker? ✯

little flickers of time Jul 16, 2019 2:06:21 GMT -5

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Post by Lyn𝛿is on Jul 16, 2019 2:06:21 GMT -5

One of your most vivid early memories comes from when you were around seven.

You remember this day, because Mrs. Desjardin had made all of you gather for one big assembly in the main gymnasium. Something was very wrong, you knew, because Mrs. Desjardin was not smiling very much that day, but mostly you were looking every few seconds at the clock on the side of the gym and thinking about how Mrs. Perezia had promised to teach you checkers today, and if the assembly ran late you wouldn't get to do that.

Mrs. Desjardin had gotten up in front of everyone, and told all of you that one of the kids - not in your year, you don't recall if they had been younger or older - had gone missing, and she needed everybody's help to find them because she was so, so worried about them. She'd gone up and down the rows, asking each clump of kids whether they saw anything weird going on the previous night. You didn't know anything about the missing kid - not that most of you did - but you did have something to say. You had been mad at Revaz all night, because he kept opening and shutting the boys' dorm's door when you were trying to sleep, and when you'd gotten fed up with the noise you'd gone out into the hallway to see him sneaking a teddy bear from the playroom into his room. There had been some yelling and some shoving, and it had ended with Revaz calling you all sorts of names and slamming the door in your face, and you hadn't even been able to get back to sleep after all of it.

When she reached you you had told her all of that, and you don't know what exactly happened after she pulled him aside but Revaz had come back sobbing and she'd made him practice apologizing to you over and over until both of you were sick of it. It had taken him ages to forgive you after that, and you figured you deserved it. You hadn't meant to make him cry, or to get him banned from the stuffed animals. But they taught you to tell an adult if someone bothered you, and the noise he was making with the door had definitely bothered you.

You don't make that mistake again. You learn to bottle up the little annoyances and shove it down inside, because you saw, over the years, how saying something about it anywhere the adults could hear only ever led to two different outcomes: either they'd wave it aside and tell you it was no big deal, which made you feel bad, or they would make it into a big deal and somehow, that managed to make you feel worse.

That allowed you to wind up as one of their favorites, you supposed, because you hardly ever complained about much of anything. Scoring high in the training exams, of course, didn't hurt you. Even so, eight-odd years later when Mrs. Desjardin calls another assembly, and asks again if anyone had seen anything suspicious - you remember the way they'd eyed the big oak tree by the eastern wall, the one the adults always told you was too dangerous to climb - you stay silent.

You think of the kid you knew nothing of, all those years ago, and you think of Mrs. Perezia, who'd allegedly quit working at Aether the same day the kid went missing. You still miss Mrs. Perezia a little, even though you've met a lot of other scientists who have come and gone. You think of the rumors - spread from classmate to classmate through gestures and signs when the adults weren't looking - that she'd run away too, kidnapped the kid and ran off to live in the wilderness. You like it here, more or less, and you remember Mrs. Perezia liking science as much as you like swordfighting; but you do believe the rumors, even if you don't quite understand why she left.

Whereever she is, you think, you hope she's happy. And you hope wherever your classmate is, that they're happy too.

OOC: Aether Foundation NPC kid, ft. Name, Lusamine and Robin's mom :hell_kim:

Last Edit: Jul 16, 2019 2:15:21 GMT -5 by Lyn𝛿is

Lyn𝛿is
Capitol Resident

1,582 POSTS

Pronouns: ; DROP TABLE Gender;--
last seen Aug 25, 2023 23:48:21 GMT -5

does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker? ✯

little flickers of time Jul 25, 2019 1:51:38 GMT -5

Quote

Post by Lyn𝛿is on Jul 25, 2019 1:51:38 GMT -5

I can't do it, Bridgit Michelson thought miserably, her heart racing and her breath coming in shallow gasps as she sat, curled up in the back alley behind the hospital. I can't, I -

Another wave of tears overflowed from her brimming eyes, dripping down her cheeks. - I need to be tougher than this. Somewhere in the back of her mind, the nurse part of Bridgit was still running, surveying the symptoms of her body and diagnosing herself with a panic attack; that knowledge didn't make her chest stop hurting or the world feel like it was spinning all around her.

She couldn't let the other nurses see her like this. She couldn't afford to be outside, shaking and sniffling like a little girl, when there was still so much work to do and so many patients to help. In half a year she would be of age. In half a year she was supposed to move up from intern to full-time junior nurse, and - it was the only career she'd imagined herself in for the past seven years. She didn't want to let them down, and make the rest of them think she couldn't handle it.

Bridgit fumbled out a cigarette from the half-empty pack she carried in her pocket, cursing as her fingers slipped and flicked the cigarette onto the ground. She dusted it off and lit it anyways, taking a deep drag and letting the smoke settle in her mouth and lungs. She'd thought she could handle anything at work. She'd scrubbed down after messy births, watched as a patient's rattling breath stopped and their monitor flatlined, cleaned out necrotic ulcers that she could smell the stench of through two layers of peppermint-soaked surgical masks.

She thought back to the room. It was just another body, she told herself. Just another patient. Another dead patient. Another -

She couldn't shake the ashen and lifeless face from her mind.

Someone was laying a hand across her shoulder. Startled, Bridgit dropped the cigarette, which fizzled out on the ground, as she turned to see the head nurse standing behind her.

"It's okay," she said to Bridgit, slowly. "It's okay."

"It's hard for all of us, at first," the older nurse continued, and it relieved Bridgit a little, to see her looking concerned and not at all angry at her for choking out an excuse and leaving the room earlier. "You get used to it, eventually."

"He was just a kid," Bridgit mumbled. The cigarette lay on the ground where she had dropped it. She picked it up and tossed it into an almost-full ashtray nearby before turning toward the head nurse. A kid no older than my sister, she doesn't say, trying to shove out the same intrusive thoughts she'd had earlier. Jasna in that frozen forest. Jasna collapsing. Jasna dying in agony, locked in a futile battle with the infection burning through her bloodstream. It was bad enough, to watch the deaths distanced behind a screen, but when there was a body in front of her -

Looking at the dead kid earlier, Bridgit had realized that she was now older than her sister would ever get to be. She could feel the tears welling up again, and she rolled up the sleeve of her scrubs, wiping them away with one arm. Tears wouldn't fix anything, she thought.

"The young'uns are always the hardest." The head nurse shook her head. "None of us like seeing someone who oughta have had a full life ahead of 'em. None of us like not being able to help."

"I know," mumbled Bridgit. She felt useless, surrounded by so much death, the sum of all her efforts seeming to amount to the equivalent of trying to pick up the last tiny droplets out of a vial of medicine.

"Sooner or later," the head nurse said, "we all come across cases that make us question our purpose." Bridgit had to wonder whether she was reading her mind, or whether it was so obvious what she was thinking that the head nurse didn't need to. "We ask if we're doing enough, and the answer is - we're not. We're never going to be. But that doesn't mean we aren't necessary."

"Hold onto that." She sounded as if she was talking to herself as much as to Bridgit, even though her hand was still on the younger nurse's shoulder. "Be proud of it, on the days you can't hold on to anything else. Let that be your purpose."

Bridgit took several deep but still slightly shaky breaths. "All right." She felt a little steadier now, and the aching had faded to a dull soreness in her muscles.

"Ready to head back in?" the head nurse asked her, after a long pause. "I'll move you off of finalizing that - case," she added quickly.

"Yeah," Bridgit responded. I have to be.