CW: Discussions of suicidal ideation.
Part 5:
Don't Let Moments Pass Along And Waste Before Your Eyes
"I'm worried about Juliet," Alesha tells you. By whom she means Sekhmet's player. "Please tell me I'm off-base about it."
You rub your eyes and blink at the chill. "Good morning," you say, stretching just outside your tent. "If it's morning yet, christ I think dawn isn't broken yet, it's just got a hairline crack."
"Deedee," she pleads. "Please. This is important."
You pause. Well, look at her, and stop talking; you need to keep rolling your shoulders, getting your bloodflow going.
Alesha looks genuinely scared, strangely small in just a jazzerant coat - without 55 pounds of gilded and runecarved steel protecting her. Harried by a week on the road. Harrowed by whatever she sees in Sekhmet. Who did, in fact, tell you honestly that they weren't okay.
But no one here is, and it's not like home was much better for them. Or you.
"What's going on with Jules?" you say, trudging with Alesha to last night's firepit. Doing necessary chores while you talk is quickly becoming second nature to you.
Alesha sighs, grabbing kindling from the pile, forming a mound in the middle of the stone circle you built last night.
"Don't you think Jules is taking the violence here in too much stride?" she says. "Talking about how much better it is here, where she can fight back. Was her real life that violent?"
You grimace. "Jules worked at the Tote-Em-Snax I operated out of on San Pablo, near the seawalls. We had a real problem with armed robbery."
"Jesus Christ," Alesha says, quietly. "She never told me."
"I don't think she likes to talk about having to hand over what was in the register," you say, laying a log on top of the kindling pile. "We weren't attacked nearly as often as we are here, but it was often enough that I felt safer doing deliveries from home."
"Right," she says, working with you, layering one wrist-thick log after the other, interweaving them. "I'm not sure having knives and fighting back is the improvement she thinks it is, though."
"Yeah, uh, all three of us don't think that's healthy," you say. "It is what it is. Coping with..."
You gesture to Mundus. To all of the forest path around you, the road with a milestone, carved with runic wards against monsters. The rude tents, and the cart you were hired to protect.
Alesha shakes her head. "I think it's worse than that. Keeping a trophy of the time she nearly died is one thing. But some of the things she told me while I was healing her are worse than that."
"So naturally you broke HIPPA and came to me," you say, folding your arms. "You know, like you do at Social Security."
"Come off it," Alesha says. "You're her roommate IRL and the closest thing Mundus has to a psychiatrist. I'm not the person who can help her. I thought you could."
You have no real argument and nod, stepping back. Alesha gestures to the kindling, gathering a mote of holy radiance to fling into the firepit. It leaps into golden flame.
"She joked about giving up on returning," Alesha says. "About how she'd be better off working a tavern here."
"Given how much we're paid, Jules isn't wrong," you mutter.
Alesha turns to you, stricken. "Leaving her body and real life behind? How is that any different from -"
She shakes her head and folds her arms, turns away.
"I know what 'suicidal' looks like," you say, voice flat. "In Jules, even. It's not that."
"And if she abandons our world to homestead this fantasy, what difference would it make to her family and friends?" she asks.
The objections you were going to raise to that die in your throat.
"I'll talk to her," you say.
"Please," Alesha says. "I don't think she'll listen to me. But she'll listen to you."
Do we agree with Alesha?
[] Yes. It's not healthy to consider life in Mundus as a viable alternative to going back.
[] Yes. It would be different if we
could still talk to the outside world, but as things stand, it's not fair to the people we left behind.
[] Maybe. It's not like we have proof we're still alive or that a return is even possible if we are.
[] Maybe. Do we even know if life in Mundus is a possibility? Do we even have enough information to know how stable our situation is?
[] No. It's not her place to decide this for Sekhmet, and we can't rule out the possibility that we
will open up communication outside.
[] No. Life here
is measurably better, for her and for me, than life back home.
Voting will end at noon on December 26th.
And on that note, Merry Christmas. I'll try to have leave a present in the thread on the day.
