devlog #37, mmmm. yeah. that's the good stuff.

Hello!

I've written a lot during the past two weeks. I'm finding a way back to myself, and my style, it feels like. I've coded nothing again (sorry). The "completed" UI was dropped into my inbox, and while I had doled out pretty specific instructions for the final thing, this dev took the free UI template I sent him to inspire, and barely made any changes himself bar changing some images and minor changes. I could have done that myself in one afternoon, so safe to say, I am... disappointed. I didn't have the urge to argue, because I did get to learn, but a lot of the changes we were supposed to implement just never happened. It's the minutiae. I might be at fault here, but as I perused the code last week, I was shocked to see that literally no meaningful changes had been made according to my wishes.
It is littered with bugs, too. So sure, I'll write it off as paying 400 bucks for a short-lived tutor. Barely that. I'm very... miffed... about this and haven't had the energy to thoroughly go through it and make changes myself (hence the no coding for a while). I'm scowling at the name I'm supposed to put in the credits that were not needed, before this. It's petty, I know. I have to dive deeper into it at some point to learn about what went wrong, if I was in the wrong, but yeah. I'm avoiding it at the moment.

I work. I study. I dance. I kiss(!!). I despair. I have glimpses of such optimism... the word doesn't cover it, truly-- I shoot out of bed and I... just LIVE. And I enjoy it so thoroughly that I fall back into bed giggling, paying no heed to the fact that I might wake up the next day and feel like nothing is worth it. Sigh. Misery is wasted on the miserable, ain't it? The mood swings are wild. At some points, I'm willfully neglecting my well-being to get ahead. To push. Trust me when I say that I don't want to do that, but as probably all of you know, it is just how it is on this bitch of an earth. It's eat or get eaten, and while I so many times don't have any semblance of an appetite, I am hungry. I don't want to just lay down and die. I've wasted enough of my life.

So, let's get a move on. I'm setting the table for us. I'm folding out the napkin and placing it in my lap. Let's eat.

(Metaphors aside-- someone needs to start hounding me about ACTUALLY opening up VScode and just work on the demo soon. I am avoiding it. It is true. I don't know why. I just. Need a tap. A shove, maybe. A swift kick. A baton to the temple. A crushed kneecap. idk. SOMETHING. I keep looking within myself and coming up short. I can't keep writing forever, even though I am really happy with my progress. I need to do something with all this material!!! I want to place it in your hands!!!! Bow-wrapped and everything!!!) 

... God I love this version of the meeting (The hedgemeet, as the scene is called in my work). I'm still so torn on what to do with S in this instance-- this path includes a kind of... kidnapping? willful abduction? of them instead of them being roped in from the start, and I love it and its implications of S as a character. It jumbles the timelines, in a totally fun way for you readers, but not for me. Ok, a little bit for me, too, if not for the headaches. Now the rest of the paths feel both more lacklustre AND more sinister. Morally gray, thy is my name. I am hemming and hawing. I'll work it out. Anyway. Enjoy stumbling over familiar furniture, eh?

... How are you fairing with all the out-of-context-bits, anyway? You don't have to answer me. I know most of you are lurkers. But I had a read-through of my latest sneakpeeks and they make no sense. I promise they do, to me! It's an intricate weave, this story. Hence my soul-deep urge to write a straight forward rom-com on the side. Ouroboros is just... It's All That, everything I have wanted in a story. A release (hah). And I'm not experienced. Nor am I cunning. But I am stubborn. So you will get it. As will I. One day...

OK NO MORE YAPPING.

REMIND ME TO GET CODING.

--

Your jaw clenches, unclenches. Yor is unfolding a map over the table. It looks familiar— Hirswreath? No. The ruins of the town of Hjorth. You shudder. Lake Sevell, where the witches live. You flick your eyes up at the one nearest— Auryn. You hitch a brow. "A new experiment gone wrong?" Overcome with relief, you shrug. "Not my monkeys, not my circus."

"That is not… well—" yor says, busy weighing out the corners of the map with the empty cups. "I can't safely say there hasn't been any new experiments, but this is something else. Coming from Oona."

"Oona?"

"Oona."

"What does she have to do with it?"

"She found the message."

"Message?"

"A letter."

"A letter—"

"Incomplete. A—"

Everyone trades looks, avoiding your own seeking, borderline frantic, eyes. You lean back, *[nervous tick choice]: touching each finger to the pad of your thumb, over and over.
What's the wait? The shifty looks? You feel… fizzy. Spiraling.

What?

Idren is the first to give in, leaning into, over, the table, giving it two raps of his knuckle over the heart of the lake. "We… I... think it's from leith."

*You luxuriate in a sumptuous eye-roll, cackling, locking your hands over your head, slouching into your seat and stretching out your legs, crossed at the ankles. Taking up space. Taking back space.

"Sure." Your body feels funny.

You toss your chin up at the table, your posture remaining. "Show it to me."

yor pulls a vial from his pocket and shakes a scroll loose. Unfurling it, he hands the waterlogged parchment to you.

broke, Stila

key

mir

may

this

Sevell

All

Leith

"This is all we could make out from it. Oona indicated that she found it here, in the lakes center. I assume she either found it under the surface, or on an island. Next to the lake are the ruins of Hjorth, where we know a coven of faunae resides. This is a problem, as they won't allow outsiders near their lake. In fact, I don't think anyone but idren and Oona has come near them at all."

You nod, it's all making sense.

Auryn's hand hovers over your bouncing thigh, before pulling back. Maybe because you flinched, or because of the scathing look you sent him.

"— and then there's the matter of the body."

In the corner of your eye, you watch as idren stiffens, his armored fists curling up so quickly at his thighs that they let out a gasp of their own. You turn your head slowly, tilting it. Smiling, maybe?

Silence.

"The body?" Clenched teeth. You relax, a little. "What. Body."

Yor pushes his lower lip into his upper, vaguely undulating a hand in font of him as if he could snatch the sentence he wants to say from the air, if he could just find it. Auryn clears his throat, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees, hands clasped, thumbs catching his head, massaging his temples. Idren— well. he's silent, for once. Small mercies.

Shoving your chair backwards, you push to a stand. "What fucking body?"

"Mate, calm down—"

"Mate?!"

At this point, Idren starts giggling. You run a palm over your face, twirling in a half-circle, stilling yourself— needing to stifle a laugh yourself.

This is a joke.

Surely.

The river gurgles happily outside, the sun is shining, and you still haven't carried out your daily routine yet. There is the lawn, the dropglass bulbs that needs to be harvested and put into jars to be fermented— wait. It's early spring, right? And a refreshing dip in the river does sound nice. It's been a long winter. You could wash some of the furs at the same time, too, gather up some soap-root and crush in some lavender, make it all nice and fresh. Yeah. Do a bit of diving, perhaps. The clams are plentiful this time of year, and you should set up your salt-catching cloth at some point soon now that the thawing has run its full course, maybe wash the windows—

"pcname."

You look up.

"he didn't listen." idren laughs hopelessly, shaking his head. "Of all the things…"

Yor clears his throat, meeting your eyes as you glare at him. "I was saying— it's, well, it's some form of Leiths body. Not the actual—"

"We don't know that." Auryn is inspecting his nails, completely detached. "They seem to think—"

"Of course they fucking do, I told you it couldn't be, not only thinking of the giant, gaping hole—"

And your brain checks out. Huh?

Leith's body.

Sure.

Leith's body?

They all nod. Solemnly.

Grabbing the side of the sink to steady your legs, as the bones have seemingly disintegrated within them, you don't stop the deranged laughter that erupts from your throat, the force of it doubling you over.

[next]

They left you alone, after that. After spending a couple of minutes laughing, harder and harder with every chipped breath; you had apparently stopped— abruptly silenced yourself in the middle of a fit, smiled sweetly, walked over to the kitchen table and flipped it over. Things shattered. Some of the drawers were now out, hanging off their hinges, their contents cluttering the floor. You kicked… something? A fork had embedded itself in the wall, still thwanging.

Leave.

It was uttered so gutturally they had all scrambled without a word, and your eyes shut to the world.

Now, three different candors filter from the (gently, almost) closed front door. They have all taken up residence at your front porch, the sun setting above them, spores lazily rising from the forest floor, winking in and out. Hisses pass between auryn and idren, yor's calm tenor cutting through it with a rumbling finality.

China clinks. The aroma of roobios tea drifts on the breeze. It almost makes you laugh again.

A tea party, then. A tête-à-tête with the new vanguard of the now well established hedgeguard. In your home. You grant it the snort of derision it deserves.

Leith… ? 

Your eyes shut once more.

[next]

With your back slouched against the wall, you sit. There's a steady clink… clink, thud, as you twist a folded knife in your fingers, tapping it to the floor with every pass, raising the rope-wound handle of it to your fingertips, flicking it over, starting again. Staring past the wall. Past the swinging light from the ceiling. Leith. lehis body. Things race past your conscience, flickering in and out before you can catch them to examine. Scents. Voices. Signs. Portents?

Clink…clink, thud.

It takes a while, for everything to filter back into reality. The density of the matter pushing itself through the muslin of your unbelieving rationale, mud into filthy water. You shake your head, levering yourself onto your haunches, straightening, sloughing off the dredges. Bouncing on the balls of your feet, just twice.

"Get back in here." you toss it over your shoulder once you still, voice hoarser than you have ever heard it. (Had you been screaming?) You step to the sink and shove your whole head under the (still) running faucet. The sun has set.

[next]

All these years, all these wasted, endless years, you could have returned. You could have fought your way back. You could have screamed their name until your voice was part of the evening symphony, until your heart cracked open from the sheer force of it. Didn't it already?

You allowed yourself to drift into oblivion. You allowed the years to strip you— of your courage, of yourself. You wanted it. And now, now. You did not simply lose them that day—no, you chose—

There was so much. It flickers through your skin in pins and needles.

You convince yourself—you have convinced yourself—that it was. Too much. That there was nothing to be done. That they were gone, swallowed by the earth, taken by the wrath of battle, and time. But is that the truth? Is that the truth you have lived with? That you settled with?

What if?

Feelings wheel over your head, into your chest, out the back, over, under, into, through, out, over, under, into—

"You all done, bud?"

Your face whips around to face idren as idhe flips the table back with ease, contorting your every muscle in to the most what-the-fuck-is-wrong-with-you expression you can muster. Bud? Mate? Your mouth works, but no words come out.

"Right." Yor claps his hands together, the sound a boom. He pulls up a chair, sits in it. Auryn places his hands on the back of the next, leaning onto it, then leaning back, his body a stop-motion of back and forth. While auhis face is still aimed at the now rightly turned table, they flick to you, and back again, some emotion caught in them for the split second they meet yours. Pity? Guilt? Derision?

"Right," you clear your throat, wiping the wet off your forehead, *the mass of it still dripping onto your shoulders, a metronome, a countdown. You breathe through it.

"Tell me everything. Start at the beginning."

[next]