© Erin Wright
I once asked my parents why my cat, called Napoleon, didn't live with us any more. They told me that an old lady down the street was feeding him instead and he spent all his time there because of it. I was less than ten years old. I did not question why they old lady was feeding him instead.
I got older and the lesson of the cat stayed with me; why should I do something, if that something was not going to 'feed' me? Why should I go out, if going out was unpleasant or unnecessary? Why should I follow the rules, if the rules took from me, but gave nothing back?
So I failed at school and work and everything else that might be considered serious adult life.
Everyone considered this weird, because I was not unintelligent or incapable, nor was I lazy. I was sometimes seen to have spent more than 24 hours working on a project. I crafted worlds from dust and putty. I made things that awed people. I made things that shocked them. I thought and considered things that people had never imagined. I was not unhealthy in any way (although I might have been considered a little unfit).
I once ate a curry that was too hot for me, and made me sick the next day. I could smell it everywhere I went and in the end I curled up in my bed with a hot-water bottle and a book. I don't really read books any more. The internet and magic devices seem to have made them obsolete by making it easier to get stories without having to go and get them in print. I like reading though, so I was especially upset when someone came around my house and told me off because I didn't have any books. I could have stabbed them for it, if I were not weak and being most of a pacifist.
I learned a lot from exploring the world, which I stopped doing when the world became unsafe. I couldn't afford the body armour and assault rifle, and going down to the welfare office to get one was too risky. I didn't even consider asking a friend to make the journey for me, because I couldn't think of a way to make it benefit them. I'll probably go exploring again once the all clear sirens are sounded; I'll be sure to take something I can protect myself with.
I learned a lot about strange people, whose feelings about being strange were “If I'm the strangest person you've seen today, you lead a very boring life”. This thought led people trying to out-strange each other, in order to render the lives of everyone else boring. This wasn't very interesting in the end because they shot off into the distance ahead of the rest of the world because they had separated themselves with it in the act of being strange. I don't know how to be strange and still fit in with the rest of the world though. It might well be that fitting in is actually an illusion. It is probably actually the case that being interesting is inversely proportional to fitting in.
I once met a woman who described herself as an elf. I did not disagree with her, but she looked like a human; because I did not disagree, she went on to tell me what it was like to be an elf in a world of humans, and how annoying humans could be sometimes about her elfhood. She spoke of how depictions of elves always got it wrong, that hatchets and knives were common weapons among her kind, not swords, because swords were useless in woodland survival. I asked her if she ever had people try and tell her that she was human too, which she told me she hated, because it was the same as them telling her that she either knew nothing about herself or was a liar trying to deceive them. In the end she settled down with another elf that she met in the north.
Of course, none of this relates to the story of how we first met. Which is actually a strange story I don't remember any more. I intended to ask you if you remembered so many times until the point I forgot again and stopped caring. I get the feeling we didn't meet so much as assume we already knew each other and behaved appropriately. This doesn't bother me so much, aside from a little mild confusion that makes me wonder if actually there was a time you didn't exist and actually you just wrote yourself into reality and I was a convenient person for you to know, backing up your prior existence.
The day they came for me I wasn't at home, which meant they had to leave a message for me apologising for breaking down my door. They posted a police officer at my door until they repaired it, who was a very nice chap. I wasn't done with my travelling though, so when they came a second time, a few days after they had replaced the door, but I wasn't in again. This time they just set my house on fire, which wasn't very nice of them. Their insurance did pay out for the replacement of all my things, but they couldn't replace the pictures of me when I was young and ugly.
My mother always taught me to speak in code. My father never much approved because it meant he never could understand me. The problem with codes is that you have to have set it up with the person you're talking to in advance, otherwise they have to spend a lot of time decoding what has been written. I don't think my mother was right because it only ever made things more confusing. Habit makes it difficult to not follow her instruction, and it's too late to win my father back anyway.
