So I once made a funny shit post about the Young Wizard actually beaming to the Spiral at the tender age of 45 but it got me thinking of the opposite. What if the Wizard was incredibly young
Since in the game it isn't specified at what exact age we arrived in the Spiral I think it's just up to the player to come up with that part. I personally like to think The Wizard was around 7 or 8 when this happened but what if they were actually like four or five years old
Like shieeeet that's young enough where we wouldn't really remember our time on Earth very clearly right? Our family and maybe our friends but unless we had like ungodly memory powers, we wouldn't be able to remember all of the details of our original home. Like isn't it proven that human beings first gain self and special awareness at 3 or 4? Something like that
And this can open up for some sweet scenarios - little kid Wizard running up to Malorn with a scribbled drawing of him with a big smile on his face, or us and Ceren reading picture books together or clinging onto Nolan's robes as we attempt to stand on his feet as he walks like a penguin, but there's also this sad and messed up undertone that in this universe Ambrose took what was essentially a child just out of toddler stage and decided to keep them in the Spiral instead of returning them to their family
And like imagine how that would affect us. We would see it as normal at first because we grew up in the Spiral, we spent more years in the wizard world than in our home on Earth, but what if the Wizard gained awareness later on in life and actually realized what happened. Would they even care at that point because the Spiral was integrated in them at such a young age? Would they feel any yearning towards their original family, would they miss them at all? Would the Wizard be bitter about not getting to know them?
It's different when you're 7 - 10 and onwards because at that stage in your life you've more than gotten used to Earth life. You've gained awareness and it has been emotionally and mentally established that THIS (Earth) is your home. You know your parents and you know your friends and you know your environment. You will miss that when it's gone and feel it's absence because you're old enough to at least notice when you're taken away from it. But when you're still at that impressionable and oblivious stage of like 4 - 6 years old? The Spiral is all you know now. Your parents faces will be blurry, you may not even remember the details of what your home looked like. You may remember certain smells, colors or feelings you experienced when you were on Earth but that may be about it. And the saddest part about that is depending on what Ambrose and the other adults put our Wizard through, we may grow to completely forget even those essential memories. That Earth part of us would TOTALLY be gone and that would include even our parents (or other caretakers). I'm crying actually
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I was raised agnostic and tend to remain ambiguous on theological matters.
-but my house has a porch on the second story that affords me a terrific view of my neighborhood and the Colorado Front Range and I was partaking of some peace before the 4th Of July Finger-Loss Festivities begin, and I have had a
~*Spiritual Experience*~
I just watched my neighbor try to unload an actual wooden pallet that had to have been forklifted into the back of his insecurity pickup worth of fireworks.
Except that he does not have a forklift in his garage.
He does have so much sports memorabilia and cardboard boxes of unsold MLM Merchandise and patriotically themed camping gear and posters of women in bikinis and flags of suspect political organizations in his garage that there is only
BARELY
enough space for the fireworks
and certainly none for his truck.
So he had to unload the individual boxes of recreational explosives from the back of his truck and stack them in the minimal space he had cleared by hand.
This is a tedious and time-consuming process as this neighbor has purchased a wide variety of recreational and locally illegal explosives instead of many of just a few types, so the individual boxes are rather small.
He begins,
and this is crucial to what happens next,
by cutting apart the industrial-grade saran wrap his explosives dealer had so carefully wrapped his merchandise in, and discarded it
unsecured
on his lawn.
Where Outdoor Conditions sometimes happen.
His process for unloading the fireworks is to
1. Climb up through the gate into the bed of his pickup truck (a feat made unusually difficult due to the slope of his driveway, and this man's fascinating decision to wear the world's Siffest and least Flexible Denim Overalls.
2. Once in the pickup bed, he selects ONE (1) box from the pile
He is apparently from a niche religious institution that doesn't believe in stacking things.
3. Carries it awkwardly around the palette that barely fits in the truck bed
4. His wife yells "Be careful!" when he nearly falls out of the pickup.
5. He Yells "SHADDUP!" back at her.
6. The Large German Shepherd barks from inside the house.
7. He yells "SHADDUP!" back at her too.
8. He sets the (1) box down on the gate
9. Slowly and awkwardly climbs out of the pickup bed
10. picks the box back up, and carries it into the garage.
Question: Aren't you going to help this poor man?
Answer: Absolutely Not.
There's four military veterans, MANY dogs, and several people with dementia in this neighborhood, all of whom are terrified by this chicanery every year and many neighbors have repeatedly asked him to maybe do the fireworks somewhere else.
(This is the Eighth Year Running he's held a major demolition event in his driveway, and for those of you who can do math, you may be able to guess the precipitating incident to this little ritual)
Additionally, I live in Colorado, a state marginally less prone to spontaneous and catastrophic conflagrations than a rotting grain silo, but only marginally.
Our recreational explosives laws are written accordingly.
I am in fact calling the Non Emergency line to report Fireworks violations, and reading off the brand labels to someone named Dorothy, who is gleefully totaling up a SPECTACULAR fine for my oblivious neighbor.
However, while I'm on the phone with Dorothy, I notice the wind begin to pick up.
and by "Notice" I mean "The Industrial Saran Wrap he left on his Lawn earlier is suddenly swept up about 100 feet into the air by an updraft intense enough to make my ears pop"
And by "Pick Up" I mean "I look up to see the sky has turned a fun and exciting shade of glass green, and the bottoms of the clouds are bumpy and rounded, and the overall effect is not unlike looking up through the bottom of the cup at God's Matcha Boba Tea."
For those of you who do not live in places with Inclement Weather, these conditions mean "You have about 30 seconds before a Major Meteorological Event Occurs."
I move under the eaves.
"Hang on Dorothy." I say, nose filling with Petrichor. "The show is about to be cancelled."
"Oh, that doesn't matter!" Dorothy cheerfully informs me. "It's illegal for him just to possess those, no matter if he actually gets to set them off or not."
"Terrific, because he's gotten maybe five boxes out of a hundred inside."
Sometimes,
the weather gods are Merciful and give you a verbal warning, typically in the kind of thunderclap that makes your ears ring.
The Gods were not merciful today.
It's not often that I am in the time, place, correct angle or in a properly observational frame of mind to see this,
But I got to see it today.
Huh. I thought. I've never seen a cloud just DIVE for the ground before.
Oh. I realized as it got closer.
That's RAIN.
Sometimes, a thunderstorm will form in such a way that the rain that would normally be distributed over an area of say,
five to tent square miles,
is instead concentrated into an area of say,
my neighborhood exactly.
So today, I was granted the rare privilege of being able to actually see the literal wall of water descend from On High and DIRECTLY onto my porch, my street, and my neighbor's truck, and his pile of unwrapped fireworks.
The sheer impact force of the downpour immediately scatters the teetering pile of fireworks boxes in the back of the truck, like the wrath of God striking down the tower of Babel.
Boxes tumble, then are washed out of the bed of the truck by the deluge.
Smaller Boxes are carried down the road in a little line by the stream forming in the gutter, like little impotent explosive ducklings.
My neighbor was definitely yelling something, but I could not hear what over the DEAFENING noise several million gallons of water makes upon high-speed contact with the earth's surface, but there was a lot of arm-waving and faces turning red as he went looking for the saran wrap that had probably blown to Nebraska by now, while his wife started disassembling the complex three-dimensional puzzle of interlocking material goods in search of a tarp.
They do not have a tarp.
They have one of those wretched Thin Blue Line flags though, and my neighbor jogs out in a futile effort to cover what's left in the truck.
Which is when the hail begins.
"HELLO?" Yelled Dorothy.
"HI!" I shouted. "WE'RE HAVING SOME WEATHER!"
"OH GOOD!" she shouts back. "WE NEED THE MOISTURE!"
I watch for a minute longer, but the loss was immediate and catastrophic- the hail is the size of marbles and dense and cares not for your pitiful cardboard and cellophane, ripping the boxes asunder and punching holes in the few things covered in plastic.
The colors on the Thin Blue Line Flag are seeping all over the remains of that it was supposed to protect in a particularly apt visual metaphor.
Not even the few boxes that made it into the garage are spared, as the German Shepherd escapes from indoors, and in an attempt to assist her humans, jumps directly into the small stack of not-yet-ruined boxes, scattering them into the driveway and deluge. She even picks one up so her humans will chase her around the yard, before dropping it in the gutter to be swept away.
So.
I was raised Agnostic
-but even I can recognize when God slaps someone upside the head and shouts "NO!" at them.
---
(If you laughed, please consider supporting my Ko-fi or preordering my book of Strange Stories on Patreon)
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Let's Vent
cause IDK if this will see the light of day but I'm upset.
You're sad. You're miserable. You're so easily fixable too. But only indulge in the sad huh?
Like my mess of a room. My weight gain (I'm surprised I'm not more upset at that for all the work I've done). Your loneliness. Cause you were lead on by a woman to join a friend group that you desperately needed (nefariously). Then were lead on again by a woman to join a friend group you desperately needed (genuine?). And you can't step away cause you're So Dang Likable! (TM) and you also love those people and need them cause you're so dang lonely.
Which is also your fault. Cause even after seeing two close friends in caskets, you can't get over your guilt of not being there the last couple of years for your HS friends and think it's best to remove yourself from their grace cause they're better off without you. Even though they keep saying they miss you.
And it's not just your highschool, but college friends too. You know of one person that always forgives your proclivities to self isolate and still be there but you can only text him sports ball shit. Still haven't told him when you'd call back btw. And yes he's your best friend the world has ever gifted you, but he's not yours. For that reason.
You can't even get solace from your incredibly worried mother cause she is quarantined from you because you actually decided not be be a recluse and hang out with friends. But they tested positive for covid. Now you're cut off from the person that can smell your sadness from miles away cause you can't even socialize with friends right before leading you to more isolation. At least you dodge her looks of pity and concern a few days, huh?
And now you beg for a sports ball team you like to be playing a game so that you can dissociate with the parasocial environment of twitter and reddit to FEEL at least somewhat fulfilled in the social department right? But it's social junk food and you know it. The artificial connections that you formed are not meaningful and you can act like it adds validity to some type of work that you've done in the past cause PREVIOUSLY people noticed it but now you don't have much of an aura of notability now do ya? Probably cause you're not on TV and only seem to be doing the same couple jobs with no career growth.
Not that you even want that growth do you? Cause you could be applying but are letting something that potentially ruined your ability to smoothly get hired or just traverse through the world weigh on you. And TBF the weight of that will now stick with you. That INCREDIBLY stupid thing that was non consequential has been a dark cloud over you for 3 years and won't go away cause of forces out of your control. ONE thing you can't control in this vent.
But you can control how fucking sad you get when you don't answer work questions right away and your mind starts to replay the words you've found hard to push out your mind "You can never do shit. You don't do shit". That woman that was supposed to support you, that you went through hell and shame to earn, told you that shit after you gave up so much of your self to help her, while you were fucking spiraling. And she broke you, didn't she? All the confidence that you were just starting to rebuild brick by brick was once again laid askew. You still haven't built it back either. From doing the world to barely being functional, that shit broke you in ways that you still are struggling with today. Guess you don't do shit after all.
My brain isn't rational rn. It'll say things that aren't all the way true or are heavily influenced by my loneliness, my anxieties, my fears and general unhappiness that I have rn in life. It's bringing up all my childhood traumas and insecurities to front and center stage and I just ... And it's no one else's fault that I'm feeling this way. But I feel neglected. And scared. of what i'd do. And my rationality. It's stopping me from being dramatic. Like right now I'm screaming to myself BITCH STOPPPP being so dramatic. And knowing my goofy ass, even with all my tears and fears, I smile as I write this..
But I know it's coping. It's self soothing. It's just me playing survivor man. Les Stroud at your service. Spending 7 days in the deep Andrea mindfuck wilderness. Scary, I know.
Cause the instinct to call for friends. Or call for help. Has taken over by the big bad that is my mind. And it's winning. And eating my life away. By doom scrolling. Making content and never releasing it. Having ideas and never doing it. Good ideas too man. So much creativity. And a gift. Ruined by a brain hungry to dim the light I'm holding on for dear life.
This is not a cry for help. I've been a lot more sad. A lot more crazy. Nothing is like being in the bathroom of my dorm after continuous isolation and identity issues, just trying to rip myself out of my body and away from the negative voices that were screaming at me to hurt myself. Everything was so grey then.
I still see color. I can find joy in the media I consume, despite the immense guilt I feel afterwards for not doing much else but that. Steph Curry is playing well? That makes me happy. I streamed. That was pleasant as well.
I feel like a waste of space but there's SOME rational part of me that reads all of what I wrote and KNOWS it's a lie. And I pray that I never lose that voice cause it's a DAMN good voice. I know I am the reason for most of these things, but not even in a bad way. In a way I can fix if I work on myself, one step at a time.
I just need hope to pull that out. And idk where to find it. I'll have to be the one to pull it, I know. I just need.. I don't know. But I need. And I feel pathetic for being so needy. And wanting. And being so unstable. But I NEED. And I don't know where I've gonna get my need from..
I just hope I find it soon.
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