Fire Emblem memories

I played Path of Radiance(a name which makes me think of the moon or the sun rising over the ocean, the silver or golden light on the water making a road to heaven)first while I was at Condover. That was really the reason why I acquired a Gamecube in the first place.

I didn't have my own TV, then. So, instead, I used the one in the common room, which was common in name only. It was meant for students to socialise in, but it was a cold, unwelcoming room, in the basement of the main hall, with nothing really to recommend it-my fellow students preferred to socialise in the warm living rooms of the flats.

Thus, I had the room to myself, at lunch-time and after classes for a few hours each day.

White-painted stone walls, an old, boxy television set, and an ugly, uncomfortable plastic-covered armchair. Nobody ever interrupted me.

Me and the story. Me and the spirits.

It was our kingdom-mine and Soren's-tactician brother monarchs. He beat back the ghost, glared it into leaving us alone as we played; I brought down chocolate and gingerbread and tea, which we shared. We talked, and we listened, and we argued-he had a terribly annoying habit of saying 'Don't do that!' one millisecond after I had made my mistake and pressed the button to confirm it. I suspected he was doing it on purpose.

It was slow progress, since I never had long to spend down there at any one time. When the holidays came, it was only Chapter Nine. Chapter Nine: Gallia. I can't remember any other chapter titles. Just that one.

After the holidays, the common room that nobody used was closed down. A common room that people did use was opened in one of the empty flats, and I used it myself for only a small amount of time before managing to scrape together the money for a TV of my own, in my bedroom.(Expensive but necessary. Certain boys had decided to pester me while I played; I needed privacy, and in the common room I just couldn't get it. There was no joy in playing like that, no freedom to talk.)

It was a very short-lived kingdom, that cold little basement room.

Still, it is one of my strong memories. Chapter Nine was not the most exciting or difficult or easiest or most interesting of chapters, but it will always be dearest, I think, to me.

I'll remember it forever, I think; Gallian sunshine spilling into a cold English room, a beach where Rolf wanted to make sandcastles and Mist earnestly explained through a closed door to a person who wasn't listening that it was bears you played dead to avoid, not beorc; where Lethe shouted Idiot human tacticians! at us as she and Mordecai made mad dashes hither and yon and always ended up in exactly the wrong place, as I tried hopelessly to get the hang of issuing commands, and as Soren smiled his small, wicked smile and commented drily that surely I knew the saying about trying to herd cats?

And I laughed, and laughed, hunched over the controller, and Lethe made a rude noise through her nose at me and said something fittingly catty(pun intended)about how glad she was that somebody was finding this amusing. And I had had half of a Twirl bar, and there was the taste of chocolate in my mouth.

I'm not sure why I post this now. Maybe just because recently I've been thinking about Tellius again, and because this memory is so clear and bright that it deserved to be written down. Just because.

Things You Should Not Do When A Patient In Hinchingbrooke Hospital

• Make sarcastic comments about nurses.
• Make sarcastic comments about doctors.
• Make sarcastic comments about support workers.
• Make sarcastic comments about ward managers.
• Ask ward managers if they think they own the place.
• Burst out laughing uncontrollably when they reply in the affirmative.
• Monopolise the TV in the Games Room, even if no-one else wants to use it.
• Monopolise the computer in the Info Zone, even if hardly anyone else wants to use it.
• Sneak into the staff-only library in order to use the computers there after being thrown out of the Info Zone.
• Use said computers in order to find game walkthroughs.
• Use said computers in order to read mindless smut.
• Walk around grinning evilly so that everyone gets worried about what you're up to.
• Contrive to find innuendos in everything staff members say, and accuse them of having dirty evil minds.
• Stick up notices saying 'ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE' on the doors to the wards.
• Stick Occupational Therapy sticky-back plastic all over the glass window on the door of your room to stop the light coming in at night and waking you up.
• Paint the glass window black with Occupational Therapy poster paint when the sticky-back plastic is discovered and removed.
• Deny that there is anything unreasonable about doing this.
• Refer to staff members as 'whassisface'.
• Refer to staff members as 'Lord/Lady Muck'.
• Refer to staff members as 'elephants' rear ends'. Even if they are.
• Sneak out of the ward without telling anyone where you are going.
• When told off for doing any of the above, smile widely, nod, then as soon as the person telling you off is out of sight, do it again.

I love doing things I shouldn't. ^__^

Pride(In The Name of...What?)

Question for the world! Is pride okay or not?

I read a LOT of Christian writings-despite not being Christian myself at any point, though I came close a few times-and in those Pride is one of the Seven Deadly Sins, as you know.

Read Mere Christianity sometime for a good potted summary. Pride is defined there as enmity between humans and other humans, between humans and God. Pride takes no pleasure out of having something-only out of having more than someone else. Pride is what drives people to ride roughshod over people, just cause they can. Pride is when you don't care what people think of you, cause the only opinion you care about is your own...

And I believed this, y'know. Not cause I was spoonfed it-well, maybe a bit-but because I KNOW I can be an insufferable prig at times. A snob of major proportions.

Only...

Only I've been reading recently about some other ideas. Like 'constructive ego'. This idea threw me for a loop a bit-always has.

A voice-yeah, another one-turned up in my head. He's not so disassociated from 'me' as the other voices...sometimes it feels like he's a mask I wear, or I'm a mask he wears, and neither of us can tell which. I can't love or hate him because he's too close to really being me.

Let's call him Gold.

Gold is proud. He takes no crap from anyone. He likes to be acclaimed and praised-he doesn't suffer from the stagefright that I do-and he's not ashamed to admit it. He doesn't scuttle around with his head down.

Gold thinks he has a right to be who he is. He doesn't have to apologise for it, and he doesn't have to pay for the right to exist. In a 'discussion group' here with some other patients, one woman said unhappily that she felt she was useless, no good in the world, and didn't deserve to live because of it, that it'd be better for the world if she was dead. Everyone started saying things like no, I'm sure you've done good-did you ever see that movie Clarence, small things you've done might have big consequences-you must have done Good Things whether you think so or not.

And Gold spoke up through my mouth, and said that answers like that were well-meaning but they were wrong at a basic level. You have the right to exist, he said. You don't have to pay for your life by doing good works. It's good if you do, of course, it's good to be a good person. But you don't have to work at deserving your life. Me, I was born. The rest of the world just has to put up with it.

He got given some astonished looks, and then a round of applause.

I'd have expected Gold to be pure selfish bastard, but he isn't, which continually surprises me. He has this weird but genuine respect for other people that seems to come of viewing them as equals. You aren't above me, so don't get on your high horse and ride over me. You aren't below me either, so don't bow and scrape. We can look each other in the eyes.

He's free to be kind, too...Another thing that surprises me. But after that discussion group Debbie-the one friend I have here, though she's an outpatient now-was feeling depressed. It was Gold who went to cheer her up, hugged her and invited her out for a meal in town, took her mind off the bad stuff with friendly talk till she felt better.

Humane. That's the word. He's weirdly, unexpectedly humane.

He's not good, and I don't know about nice-he's too sarcastic for that! And I don't know if he's right, either...

...Despite all this, though, I want him to stay.

When I'm Gold, I feel strong.

But I worry that I'm...well...Sinning.

I just don't know.

Gloomy Post of Gloominess

Athene isn't answering her email.

Ash seems to have dropped off the face of the earth.

I am bored here and convinced that I'm going even more bonkers than I already was.

I'd scream, but really, I just don't have the energy.

AAARGH!

Well, I now cannot get into my old blog for complicated technical reasons that pass my understanding. I'll try and copy all the stuff in it into here when I have time.

And Athene wonders why I said being coauthor on taarot would be too much trouble!

My first post from the hospital

I have a new DS. It's an old clunky preowned thing, pink of all colours(they had nothing else), and the touch screen seems to have seen better days, but it was cheap and it works. I think it was Rinoa's before mine, though I've no idea how it got here. I can just see her now, sitting on the floor resting the little handheld against her knees, tapping away at the touch screen, playing Pokemon Diamond.

Revenant Wings. I am enjoying it-the aegyl are strange folk, perhaps the strangest mortal people I've yet met, and trying to figure them out is interesting if worrying. They are what the viera pretend to be-different and apart and aloof. Not from thinking themselves better than humes so much, but simply from not being interested in them much. Viera remind me of Nobodies inasmuch as they insist, loudly and often, that they are different, but their actions give the lie to it. And while there are runaway viera in droves, whoever heard of a runaway aegyl? The Yarhi, too, are strange. I like the odd little family Shiva has-a paramour that looks a little like Squall and a little like Howl, and a son(I think)with a scowly little face, and I was tickled to find that there are Cu Sith-about time there were cooshee to balance out the equation.

(Once long ago I saw it spelled like that, cooshee, but I don't recall where or when. No matter.)

The aegyl live for such a short time; part of me can't help but be horrified by that, though I know they're used to it and it seems perfectly all right to them, but part of my hindbrain can't help but see death at forty as monstrously unfair, as a kind of species-wide terminal genetic disease, as being cut down in ones' prime.

The more sensible and sarcastic portions of me wonder whether this is what Fran feels like all the time.

Vaan is Vaan, as ever-little quick-foot, sandhair moppet, and Pen is Pen, Penny-low, Penny-lane, and I'm reminded of the Wendy comment Athene once made because in some ways I'm reminded of Peter Pan in Scarlet...

Their banner is white, with crossed galbana lilies. It is the perfect name for the ship, the silver-wasp-angel-dragon who I am sure thinks and feels as much as any of her crew.

Dropping off the face of the earth for awhile

Gone to hospital.

Back in two weeks, probably.