My medication was twice as much as I expected for no reason, and I had to restock on dog food and art supplies, so I'm still trying to get this paid. I'm also having an annoying problem with my bank where they won't issue me a new debit card, because mine was stolen and I moved too recently, so I can't transfer money between certain apps, and it's all been very frustrating.
it terrifies her. how close did she come to never having this? to never having met?
she remembers the exact moment.
it truly, truly could have gone either way.
-or-
a woman ponders fate
ffxivwrite2025, day 24
dulia-chaiās beloved husband is nervous, and anxious, so it is usually her job to be brave. there is, however, one day of the year where she rises at dawn and takes a few minutes to herself to adjorn to the decks, watch the sunrise, and succumb to the feeling of absolute terror in her heart.
it goes like this:
twine was a dying town. everyone knew it. no one talked about it. as a child, she didnāt understand exactly what she was sensing, but even the children knew their own variety of the truth. one day the last teacher left. then the doctor they all saw. and then the assistant engineer and her wife, who took care of the youngest children in the days when their parents were in the mines. by then dulia-chai was grown enough to understand.
for a while, though, it was divine. she and her friends could do anything they wanted, everything theyād been told they never could. they ran into the fields at night, threw stones at sin eaters. they stole drinks. they stole kisses. they wrecked a trolley, once, and stood there looking at it imagining the horror and sadness in the engineersā eyes in the morning and had stayed up all night putting it back upright while desperately praying no one would find them.
and then, one day, aldet morhand goes and has a baby.
oh, everyone knows the morhands are expecting. but it's twine. no one really believes it until the baby arrives. and then, oh then, in a town where the only other thing to do is literally bang two rocks together, then there is a line out to the morhandās front door to see this new curiosity.
sheās not particularly keen on babies, and she almost doesnāt go. she remembers the exact moment. she is sitting on the porch picking at a splinter and thinking that she doesnāt like babies, but she likes the morhands, but then again she likes them only in the vague way teens like people who treat them with a modicum of respect. it could have gone either way. it really could have gone any way.
but it didnāt. she gets up, stretches, and decides that anything is better than sunburning by herself in a stifling twine afternoon. she goes to join the group of people milling around the front of the house with cakes and casseroles and old clothes with moth-holes in them. none of her friends are here, which is a disappointment so strong she almost leaves on the spot.
and then chai-nuzz shows up.
that is the moment.
oh, she knew him for ages, or, knew of him. he was the heir to the daedalus stoneworks, though, and he spent most of his time in the mines or in the workshop or deep in his books. he was hardly around when their sad small little one room school was open; afterwards, she sees him less than she sees shadows. heās always been a bit skittish, too, so itās markedly peculiar to see him marching up with such gangly awkward determination.
heās carrying what looks like a little toy, and isnāt that delightful?
she walks over, and they talk, and they talk, and the rest is history.
it terrifies her.
how close did she come to losing this? how close was she to never falling in love with him? how much of her life is not fate, but chance?
she remembers the exact moment.
it truly, truly could have gone either way.
so, every dawn on their anniversary, she rises particularly early and goes outside and lets herself be completely, totally scared.
and then she goes back inside, and lets herself be in love.
happenstance or fate. it doesnāt matter. it did happen.
she will not waste the time she has on this star letting could-have-beens haunt her.
i love those little moments where her face lights up because the joy of the joke far outweighs how sick of it she is. like the moment with the star wars music? *chefās kiss*
My account is still blocked from searching/tags/etc on my business blog @foundfamilyadventurecrafts so I'm posting this here. There's something very bad happening with Small Business, Tech, and Amazon. What else is new?
Links:
Bobo Design Studio for Updates & Submitting Information
Arrows Aim Greenhouse + Chroma Rex are putting together a complaint with WA State Attorney General's Office + Templates for complaints / opt out
Hey, that's us and a bunch of our friends! This whole thing SUCKS so bad and we're pissed. We've intentionally not listed our products on Amazon for the 15 years we've been in business. We're ready to join a class action lawsuit and kick some ass.
Friday makes really good tea, both just by the flavors and as reflections of fandoms. I absolutely LOVE my Second Breakfast (hobbits) and General's Jasmine (Uncle Iroh).
Go check out the Friday Afternoon Tea website DIRECTLY if you want to support them - and if you, unlike me, are in Seattle, go visit the brick-and-mortar store!
the hard part about writing is literally writing a banger sentence n then having to be like. do NOT share it. dont share it. dont share it. just wait. its not as good outside of context. just WAAAAAIT. when its like. if i dont get attention right this second im gonna stop writing forever my hands will turn to stone & my brain will fall outta my ears n go rolling around on the floor & down the apartment stairs & out into the cool night air never to be seen again
thinking about how when you experience a lot of shame in your formative years (indirectly, directly, as abuse or just as an extant part of your environment) it becomes really difficult to be perceived by other people in general. the mere concept of someone watching me do anything, whether it's a totally normal activity or something unfamiliar of embarrassing, whether I'm working in an excel spreadsheet or being horny on main, it just makes my skin crawl and my brain turn to static because I cannot convince myself that it's okay to be seen and experienced. because to exist is to be ashamed and embarrassed of myself, whether I'm failing at something or not, because my instinctive reaction to anyone commenting on ANYTHING I'm doing is to crawl into a hole and die. it's such a bizarre and dehumanizing feeling to just not be able to exist without constantly thinking about how you are being Perceived. ceaseless watcher give me a god damn break.
If you took the Bioshock characters and placed them in front of the original Monopoly, I donāt even think theyād last a whole game. Itād be constant fighting and eventually lead to a table flip. But the only person who might actually enjoy it?
Sinclairā that game was made for him. Heād cause the eventual table flip, actually.
itās funny going through our other father tag and only seeing five pieces of art
as if we didnāt draw him literally a hundred or so times with countless AUs and single-handedly kept his tag alive between the years of 2010-2015
people donāt associate us with it anymore (which is probably good considering) but itās one of those things that genuinely makes me look at the passing of time and go āohā followed by the realisation that weāre now closer to Charlieās age than Coralineās.