@aurorborne SENT : willow : how does your muse handle sadness & depression ? zinnia : how has the loss of fallen comrades and/or loved ones affected your muse ? has it taught them anything or given them any new perspectives ? (For Emmeline Vance)
WILLOW -- how does your muse handle sadness & depression ?
Emmeline is an introvert. There are a few people that she cares to open up to (her mom, Aurora, Regulus) but she usually tries to deal with things on her own before going to other people about her problems. I think this is also a product of being an only child in a single parent household. Though she and her mum were close, growing up, her mum was always busy at the ministry, and Em had to learn how to fend for herself. Em isn’t really the type to sulk either. She would usually try to cheer herself up, whether through buying sweets or reading one of her trashy romance novels. There were a few instances when even these remedies didn’t help, and Em’s solution (mostly because at that time, she didn’t really have a choice, but nevertheless this became her framework for how to deal with sadness moving forward) was just to sit with the feeling and allow it to run through her. At some point in her young adulthood, Em realized that there’s something to be gleaned in sadness, too, and in listening to your thoughts and feelings while you’re sad instead of just wishing them away. Eventually, all of it passes, with patience and with time.
ZINNIA -- how has the loss of fallen comrades and/or loved ones affected your muse ? has it taught them anything or given them any new perspectives ?
Loss was something Em didn’t have a lot of experience grappling with as a child, so when it happened to her during the war, she was devastatingly unprepared for how much it hurt. The loss of Lily and James, Frank and Alice, of Marlene, Dorcas -- no matter the degree of friendship she had with these comrades, the grief that Emmeline felt was profound. And of course, in verses where Regulus is dead -- Regulus who was her dear friend -- there was no way Emmeline could have prepared herself for that loss. It took Emmeline a long time to recover from the fact that these people were gone, and she would have moments of quiet and heartbreaking realization from time to time. I think what it taught Emmeline is that life is precious and short, and that death has this arbitrary system that she will never understand. I think part of Em expected to die during the first war. Compared to some of her colleagues, she viewed her skills as just bordering average to above average, and she really thought it was going to be her undoing. But she was alive and many people were dead, and it made no sense. Suffice to say, Em tried to value the life she had in remembrance of those who were no longer around. After the first war, she became even more determined to live a life that held meaning, that contributed positively to the world, that was radiant and soft and brave for all its impermanence.
