alone

You

It wasn’t too bad. You spent much of the day reading. Barring the obvious — fire, language, the wand, interspecies breeding — one of the greatest creations of the modern age was the book. Er, printing press. Paper. Ink. Okay, draw a circle around everything which helped accomplish the task of compressing knowledge and allowing it to travel across large distances and through large periods of time. Circle isn’t big enough. Sphere. Hypersphere.

You tried farming for a while. Nothing grew in Fogland. That was a waste of time.

You went north of Felkner, mussed up your face, and tried earning coin from harvesting. It was exhausting, and boring, and you felt unrewarded. At week two, you thought you had achieved some form of enlightenment, where for a whole day, you had simply picked corn, gotten sunburnt, washed yourself in Tenderson creek, picked more corn, delivered it to the manor, picked more corn, and that was a whole fifteen hours of your life gone, no deeper thoughts. But, the next day, you realized you had simply been overworking and starving yourself, and you and the other farmers were being grievously underpaid. A shame the others didn’t realize it. So you sent a pointed, anonymous letter to Anisa, warning of the potential of revolt should the pennies multiplied by the conditions continue to be as cheap as they were. The revolt was a rather bad bluff, but quickly enough, wages rose. You had expected it to be a long, drawn-out process.

Regardless, you had had enough of farming, though you supposed you took some solace that it was always a fallback career option. And really, you would’ve gotten used to the wage, as had everyone else, and you’d find the most efficient ways to take breaks, and the best foods to eat. If you’d read (even) more on how to farm, maybe you’d have lasted longer, and been more satisfied. Shame the farming techniques you’d learned at Northpoint didn’t apply to the micro level.

So, you went to Felkner, face still mussed (you wore plenty of makeup, occasionally claimed to be a victim of acid, and most people didn’t know what ‘you’ looked like, anyways), and sought for a job. Shame Samantha thought the system was still worth participating in as herself. Shame Anisa did, as well, but she was too far gone. Shame that you’d run away instead of stabbing dad in the face for picking someone completely unqualified who didn’t want it. Shame you’re now half-heartedly living for the sake of living.

You briefly worked as a typesetter, then a haberdasher’s assistant (so many people wanted unique clothing!), then a security consultant for the Royal Bank of Brune.

It was all nothing.

And then,