 |
| "Outskirts of Rome" by Jules Laurens |
Running behind, but we'll be damned if we don't catch up.
Money's a funny thing. We claw and scrabble for it, push it around, pull some back, but there's never enough for us or our people. Never enough to reach across the deep chasm dividing us and get a good hand-hold on stability. Never enough when the debtors round the corner on our debtors. And those that got it? They act like it's our fault that we don't. So we do things for it—things we shouldn't. We spend so much of our lives on it, and... See that? Spend. It's pervasive, and I always thought it would be the thing to bring me down.
But then Guy sells a pinch of spores smaller than the head of a nail and we're all outfitted with pink bubbly wine and real meat-steaks and the means to start out for something real, something lasting. We're headed to the Caravan. Nico nearly ruined things for us at the last waystation, but he swears it'll be worth it. No small amount of fortune-jealousy there, but they're not the only one. I get it sometimes. I'm sure almost all of us do.
"Almost all of us" is also who avoided the Flux. Just me for that one, go figure. Lovely stuff. It set us back by a day or two, and I'm taking in more water than the rest, but I should be back to baseline by the time we catch up.
The Caravan. God, I can't wait.
The road, the routine, the shared goal. Denove is excited, too, though they'd never say. I know they're tired of marching, changing, betraying, running—and for what? The grand reward of not enough money. Well, that'll matter less, and soon. We'll be in the City by the golden hour, we'll manage our business here, stock up well, and track down our new forever lives. It'll be a beautiful thing to be still in movement, stable in our shared instability, and maybe we'll all find a way around the chasm.
- Fulton
THANKS FOR INCLUDING ME! Glad to be on the road with ppl who REALLY care! - P!
Stop reading my journal. -F
I hate being late. Growing up, there was no sin more cardinal than being the last one to arrive at whatever gathering was happening, and I have internalized it something terrible. I am the "gotta get to the airport four hours early just in case" drag and the "I know our meeting isn't for another half hour but I'm here now and will awkwardly wait until you're ready" burden. Even now, writing this in real time, I'm thinking, "yeah, that's not great, but it would be way worse if I made them wait a couple minutes because I didn't get there in time." Hate it.
I say this to explain the pain I feel in not getting on board with Noora Rose's CHAIN MAIL sooner. The first month has passed, and I am late and miserable about it. As the month turned, I said farewell to a couple Patreon pledges that were causing me active anxiety, and I said hello to this new play-by-mail TTRPG adventure and perhaps the closest we have to Trace Italian. It's incredibly cool, has been a lot of fun to play solo (I tend to bounce off of solo or journaling games, sadly!), and is full of all the delightful flavor-items Noora is so good at peppering throughout her work. This could be an "I LOVE THIS" post. Maybe it will be before too long!
So, naturally, I'm projecting my lateness anxiety onto my caravanners. They're late, too, but they're going to fight like hell to catch up. Today, I got to meet them for a zero session. One of the first rules in the City of Fools is "do not allow yourself to become overly attached" and, whoops, already messed that one up. I'll probably do a post about them in a few days, and I have a lot more to explore and resolve before we leave the City and head out in search of the Caravan we just missed.
No comments:
Post a Comment