hadriel | 015 [Video]

Heya, guys. I'm sure a few of you um, already know what I'm gonna say.

[Chris definitely doesn't look as cheery as usual, but also not terribly upset; mostly he just seems a little drained, but otherwise calm enough.]

Em's uh... Emily's gone. So I guess I'm gonna have to take over for her in the 'telling people like it is' department, and I'd add like, the 'being right' one but I'm already right at least as often as she is. However, I'm totally not doing the sewing or getting up early to run the coffee cart parts. Gonna need other people to step in on those.

[And okay, joking aside, he takes a deep breath and continues.]

I know um, I know a lot of people here knew her, but not necessarily much about uh... What we're going back to, at home, since I don't think she talked about it much. So if anyone has any questions about that, I can probably answer, and hopefully that'll make things... You know. A little easier?

[Worrying about what people are returning to is usually the hardest part on him, when someone leaves, after all. Oh, and one more thing--]

Wolfie's still here, by the way. So no one freak if you see him with me; as Em always said, he only bites if you're an asshole.

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[ She's heard or read snippets of his past over the last year or so but they've never really gotten into anything too deeply; cannibals, wendigos, something to do with a fucking wolf, and a bunch of college age kids doing horror movie shit. ]

Oh, so the usual? I always hated it when monsters interrupted my teenage drama. [ ...Ok, that part is kind of true. ]

[He appreciates the joke in return, whether or not it might be true as well.]

Yeah, seriously. Two years in a row, man; monsters are just rude.

Maybe it's something about Canada. The people are super nice so the monsters have to be huge jerks.

[They never have this problem with American monsters. If they exist. Which is kind of a scary thought but one he's getting used to; why would monsters only exist in Canada, anyway?]

Man, fucking reality, right? It just finds a way to fuck with you. [ A pause and then her next question is somewhat more sincere. ]

Did you think monsters were real before... whatever? I mean, other than scary folklore told by parents and hollywood movies?

Nooooot at all.

[Monsters were totally not a thing. Chris is--or was--also not the type to believe in the supernatural, or even religion, so the whole real monsters thing was definitely a shock.]

But I mean, wendigos are based on that scary folklore, so I guess that's what we get for just writing all that stuff off. And if they're real, who knows what the hell else is.

[Not to mention wendigos are actually spirits, so that just makes everything even more confusing.]

How about you? I mean, you've known about weird stuff a long time, right? But is it normal in your world, or...?

[ 'If they're real, who knows what the hell is' is really quite accurate. ]

...No, no, I don't think it's normal. I've... lived a long time and while not a lot of it has been outside of the... the fog, that Otherworld place, I've always known things weren't all that right for me. I had dreams—nightmares—of someone calling my name. I sometimes would dream about something, sometimes something as stupid as my mom surprising me with something, but it would happen.

I would wake up with memories of things that never happened or things that will, with monsters hunting me down. I would walk home from school and I could see... things that linger past our layer of reality, watching me.

I mean... [ She laughs. This isn't such a big deal. ] Everyone else had normal. I could see what normal was like, you know? It was friends and doing things with other people and getting involved in after school activities and your school work actually meaning something.

I knew what normal was but I didn't get any of that.

[Chris is quiet while she talks, and he can understand what she describes a little more than she--or even he, really--would probably expect; it's not through personal experience for him, at least not exactly, but...

He'd known about Josh's problems, and although he hadn't see the worst of it there had been moments where he'd caught Josh staring at seemingly nothing, or mentioning voices, and he'd sometimes had really strange dreams during sleepovers. But for Sharon all of that was actually real, and that makes him wonder for a moment--especially with everything they've learned exists in their world--if maybe some of what Josh saw was real too.

But thinking about Josh for too long is still a painful subject, and what Josh had dealt with isn't his story to tell. So he can't offer much to Sharon in response, especially since he's pretty sure she doesn't want condolences and definitely not pity.]

That... Sucks. I mean, I'm guessing it sucks, because it sounds like it does, seriously. Especially since, you know, you didn't ask to deal with any of that.

The importance of being no one to the majority but something to a small but powerful front. [ In part, that was her: it was Alessa's doppelganger that started it, that convinced her to bring all of them into her worst possible dreams, but it was still her.

All of it's her now. ]

You probably didn't ask for the bs you went through, either, Chris. We're just... A friend of mine tells me we have no luck but I feel it's just bad.

That's, you know, totally possible.

[He's not necessarily going to argue; sometimes he feels like he and his friends had the worst luck ever, but sometimes--]

I um... I kind of like to think of it as the opposite, though. When I can delude myself into it, anyway.

[It's a joke, but he also means it.]

The shit we dealt with could've um, had a totally different end result. We could all have died so many times; there could be none of us left, instead of five for sure who got out and maybe two more. So maybe instead of having the bad luck to get into that situation in the first place, we had the good luck to get out of it.

[It sounds stupid, he's sure, but he likes looking at it that way instead of feeling like the universe--or whatever else--hates him and his friends.]

[ She listens quietly. She can see where he's coming from but, at least for her, she didn't have the good luck to get out of it. And, truthfully, neither did Chris or his friends considering where they are. ]

You're too optimistic.

I prefer to think I'm the right amount of optimistic, but that uh... Might be kind of optimistic in itself.

[It's half a joke; he'd rather be too optimistic than anything else--aside from realistic, but he thinks those things can exist together--anyway.]

I think being realistic is the best choice if you ask me.

Well, yeah, but I'm not sure realistic and optimistic are always, you know. Mutually exclusive.

Agree to disagree.

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