|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 10:46 pm
 Rumors traveled around school, especially when you lived here and could keep your ear to the ground all the time. You found out what was happening with your classmates, as well as a little bit of who and what your classmates were. If you knew who to talk to or who to ask, you could find someone to talk to for just about any situation. This was a good thing if you wanted a nice conversation, but an even better one if you need a conversation, one that won’t be that nice.
Anchriesel had two options. The first one was to go to Kirket, the school counselor. There were advantages to this. The school counselor was unlikely to spread rumors about Anchriesel, and he was unlikely to shame him for what he’d done. He was trained in all of the tools of the therapeutical trade, and was the perfect person to talk to. So why wasn’t Anchriesel going to talk to Kirket about his problem?
Well, the first problem was that Anchriesel was a teenager, and he’d rather die than admit his problems to adults. Adults were distant authority figures, far away and out of reach and generally useless in day to day social interactions. It would be like appealing to the gods just to tell them that you didn’t like the color of your neighbor’s daffodils. It was…well, telling them about your problems, then asking for help was both overkill and a tacit admission that you couldn’t handle the problem without a “grown-up’s” help. Besides, it was letting the side down, admitting that there were things a teenager couldn’t do on their own. Everyone knew that three hundred years ago a junior would be considered legally an adult. That meant that, at least back then, a junior could handle their own problems. Nothing major had happened in evolution since then, so why did people assume juniors couldn’t handle things?!
Besides, the wait to talk to the school’s only counselor was really long. It was better to seek out the help of a fellow student, and Anchriesel had one or two in mind.
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 10:50 pm
 Quilo was in need of a bit of therapy himself. It was all about a single, particular quandary.
The first friend Quilo had ever made was Tarin. She was nice, a natural leader. He missed her. She’d introduced him to a girl named Ella, and that’s sort of where Quilo’s life had changed forever. Ella was sweet, and cute, and charming, and she had a wonderful way of brightening the room without even meaning to. She worried a lot about what other people thought about her, because she genuinely cared about the way other people thought. It had been many years since Quilo had first thought that she was the girl for him, but sadly, she’d…well, she’d slipped out of his fingers. He wasn’t sure how that had happened—one minute, he’d had a beautiful girl he couldn’t stop thinking about, the next moment, poof! She was gone.
He must have done something to chase her off. Something. She wouldn’t have left him standing on his own if he hadn’t done something to upset her in the first place. But as far as he could tell, he hadn’t done anything at all. Had he been suffocating her? Had he not been giving her enough space? So far as he could tell, that was about the only thing he’d done to her to merit this treatment. And yet, it was just enough. Enough to make him feel terrible, enough to make him want to write her letters apologizing for moving too fast, enough to make him feel like a total heel. He’d pressured her too much. He hadn’t realized it, but he’d clearly been pressuring her into a relationship she wasn’t ready for, or! Maybe! That she didn’t want!
Quilo pushed off the incoming tears and tried to concentrate on the sunlight. His eyes were closed and legs were crossed as he sat on the bench, trying to think of how to mend his broken heart. He was meditating. Meditating on young love and the certain doom that befalls all young lovers.
Why wasn’t it raining?! Didn’t the weather have any sense of dramatic timing?!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 10:52 pm
Ah, there he was: Quilo. Anchriesel had first heard of Quilo when he was a child. He’d been in the same freshling dorm as Ella, Quilo’s girlfriend, and—and Ganymede. So he’d heard of Quilo, though mostly in that nebulous form of osmosis that occurs wherever emotionally unstable people congregate. No one needs to say anything solid or coherent. They just have to think it really loudly and everyone else will hear.
Chries had also heard about Quilo from a few other people who’d talked to him. Apparently he was a nice, non-judgmental guy who would listen to your problems and maybe give you some advice. Anchriesel was in desperate need of two things right now: someone nice and non-judgmental to listen to his problems, and some advice. So far all he’d had to talk to was Yaviss, who was about as prickly as stepping barefoot onto a three-inch splinter. Yaviss had inadvertently given him some advice, describing him as being cooked in a pressure-cooker that brought all of his spite to the surface (or something like that) but Chries wanted some more advice, maybe from someone gentle. Anyone who could handle Ella on one of her good days had to have a touch as soft as silk. I’m feeling delicate right now. What the heck?
He found the hybrid in a courtyard, sitting on a bench, looking for all the world like one of those wise nightmares who sit on the top of a mountain, dispensing advice and eating rice. His eyes were closed in meditation while the colors and glows of his skin swirled even in the bright summer sunlight. Chries walked over to the bench and sat at the far end from Quilo. There he waited.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 10:53 pm
At first, Quilo didn’t notice anyone else was there. He was too caught up in his own problems to notice that someone was approaching, then sitting at the end of the bench from him. He didn’t notice the newcomer until he opened his eyes. He had needed to blink away a tear before it started. As he opened his eyes, he saw a stranger sitting on the end of the bench. Quilo started. When had they gotten there?!
Quilo inspected the stranger further, turning in his seat to face them. The stranger was an Imp with silver skin wearing a lot of black and orange. It was still a couple months early for that sort of coloration, but hey, people could wear whatever colors they wanted. The stranger was familiar somehow, and the more he looked them over, the less and less the Imp seemed like a stranger. This guy…he’d met this guy before (and he was pretty sure this was a he, though it was hard to tell, of course). They’d been in some classes together, right? Yeah, they’d been in some classes together before. Like, Language Arts, or maybe social studies or something. They hadn’t worked together, but he remembered hearing the teacher call on him. What was his name, though? Was it Chris? He wanted to say it was Chris. Either that or Anthony, but that didn’t seem right. Well, there was only one way to find out.
“I’m terribly sorry, but I’m really bad with names, and I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name. My name’s Quilo.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 10:54 pm
The illusion of the wise master meditating on the mountains lasted a good while—about a minute and a half, by Anchriesel’s estimate. It ended when the half-Geist opened his eye, noticed Anchriesel, and jumped noticeably. Quilo hadn’t even noticed him approach. That was…interesting. A little disheartening, honestly, you’d expect a guy with good people skills like he supposedly had to be able to notice when someone was sitting next to him. Granted, they had a couple feet between them, but still, it should’ve been fairly obvious that Anchriesel was there…
Nonetheless, he soldiered on. He did not change his expression, even as Quilo goggled at him. Instead, he waited patiently while Quilo looked him over and asked him his name. Anchriesel nodded. “Yes, I know who you are, Quilo. We had math together this year. I’m Anchriesel. You can call me Chries if you’d like, though. It’s a bit easier on the tongue, I know.” His tail curled reflexively as he built up the courage within him. It was now or never—he had to ask. The only comforting thought he had was that anyone who was friends with Ella was unlikely to be friends with Ganymede as well. It wasn’t a lot of comfort as those things go, but it was better than nothing. He had to ask this question. He’d come this far up the mountain, and now he had to have his answer before he could return to living his normal life. Okay, so that was a trifle overdramatic, but the feelings were true, at least.
“Quilo, I’ve heard that you’re very good at helping people with their problems. I have a problem that I’d like help with. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone about it.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 10:57 pm
Anchriesel! That was it! Not Chris at all—although it did sound a lot like Chris, he had to admit. But not Chris. That was important. And not Anthony, either. Honestly, Anchriesel didn’t seem that difficult a name, though it might be difficult to write. It wasn’t hard to pronounce. Still, if someone invites you to use your nickname, that usually means that they’d prefer you use their nickname instead of their given name—even if they couched it in terms of “if you’d like.” “Math, gotcha,” he said. “I knew we’d had something together. I couldn’t remember what it was, though.”
Quilo blinked in astonishment. Wait, someone had come to him for advice? Actually come for advice? Wait…he was known for giving good advice? He’d never really thought of himself as that kind of guy before. Sure, he’d talked to a few people and helped them out, but really? And the way Chries said it was interesting, too, he said “help people with problems.” That was sort of a suspicious phrase. It was the sort of phrase that could be used for just about any purpose, from help with homework to help with disposing a body. That last one didn’t seem likely, but if he was being sought out for a “problem,” he doubted it wasn’t a math problem.
“Okay,” he said. “I don’t know how well I can solve your problem. I don’t exactly get a lot of feedback on my problem-solving skills. But if you need someone to talk to and maybe make a few suggestions, then I’m definitely your nightmare. My lips are sealed. Lay it on me.” He leaned forward so that Chries wouldn’t have to speak so loudly.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 10:58 pm
Internally, Anchriesel breathed a sigh of relief. Quilo was saying just about everything he wanted to hear. Sure, he was also saying stuff about not being that good at solving problems, but Anchriesel was just going to ignore that fact at the moment. Anchriesel leaned forward, took a deep breath, and began.
“When I was a kid, I got bullied by Ganymede. He made me feel terrible—well, you know what he was like. Last year, he had a crush on me and asked me out, so I thought I’d say yes to figure out what his game was. Turns out he—well, like I said. He had a crush on me. So we started dating, and…” Anchriesel sighed. “Listen, I feel really terrible about all of this. I don’t know what to do about it, like, at all. So please…please don’t judge me too harshly for this.” He took another deep breath.
“So I started thinking, ‘wow, now that I have Ganymede in the palm of my hand…how can I mess him up?’ I catfished him, Quilo, at least sort of. I pretended to care about him. I gave him gifts, we went on dates, I pretended to care about him. Then, at the spring prom, I told him that I’d never cared about him, and that I hated him and that he deserved to be alone forever.” This last bit came out all in a rush. Anchriesel couldn’t bare to look Quilo in the eyes now. “I think I messed him up real good. And I don’t know what to do. I feel so terrible. What should I do?”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 10:59 pm
Wow. This was a lot to unpack. Quilo steepled his fingers and thought for a while. He had helped people with their emotional troubles before, and he found that the best strategy was to unpack his own emotional baggage first. Being dumped: yes, hello, he felt that quite strongly. And at spring prom. He hadn’t been dumped at Spring Prom, but apparently Ganymede had. So now his own happy, but pained, memories of the prom (the last place he had been with Ella before their breakup) were entertwined with the thought that even while his own heart had been feeling all a-glow like it was about to struggle out of his chest, someone else had been being kicked in the gut and then kicked while he was down. Ouch.
Okay, so, his own emotional baggage was taken care of. Now that it was out of the way, he could start on Chries. “Right,” he said softly. “So. I’m going to ask you a series of questions, just so that I understand things a bit better and can give you some better advice. Uh, first question: was Ganymede the junior the same guy as Ganymede the freshling? Did he act the same way he always had, in your experience, or had he changed since you last lived with him?” Ganymede, so far as he could recall, was a senior right now. People tended to change a lot in all that time, even people as…standoffish as Ganymede. “Second question, and this one’s going to hurt a lot: why did you want to hurt him so much? Third question, and this one’s the real kicker: did he deserve it?” Quilo looked over at Chries. The Imp had his face buried in his hands. Quilo squirmed. “Actually, I lied, two more questions: what have you done to rectify the situation? And do you think this can be resolved with Ganymede?” He sat back and waited for Chries’s answers. He was prepared to wait a long time for them—these were a lot of very painful questions to think about, let alone to answer.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 11:00 pm
It did indeed take Anchriesel a very long time to think about the questions—and even longer to think about the answers. He didn’t want to think about them, that was the problem. And yet, he had to, or he was never going to get past this part of his life. He desperately wanted this part of his life to end. He wanted to move on. He wanted to be doing something different with his life, rather than being hung up on a part of his life he was ashamed of.
When he thought he might have his answers all lined up, he took a deep breath. “No. Ganymede was different. When I—when we—were kids, Ganymede didn’t care what other people thought of him. He wanted other people to go away, and if they didn’t do what he wanted them to do, he punished them. He was very controlling. But—when I—when we were—dating…when we were dating…things were different. He was…he was very different.” Anchriesel struggled to put things into words. His nose hurt. His eyes hurt. “Ganymede wanted me to think well of him. He wanted to…he wanted to make me happy.” Something wet dripped down Anchriesel’s cheek. He was crying. “He wanted to make me happy, because it made him happy to see me happy. He started to care about people, to care what people thought. When I broke up with him, I think I might have broken him, or at least broken a part of him. It was horrible. I shouldn’t have done it.” He was in full sob by this point. “I wanted to hurt him…I wanted to hurt him because I knew it would make me feel better. And that’s the worst part of it all: his happiness was dependent on my happiness, while my happiness was dependent on his misery. No. No, he didn’t deserve it! I feel…awful.”
Something soft was pressed into his hand. Quilo was handing him a handkerchief. He dared to look up at the half-Geist’s face. It was full of…of pity, and understanding, and, and, curse him, with sympathy. “I haven’t done anything. I don’t think I can talk to Ganymede, I think he’d get upset. I don’t want to make him upset anymore. I just want to leave him alone. I want him to forget I ever existed. I don’t think things will get better if I apologize to him.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 11:01 pm
Quilo listened to everything Chries had to say without comment. He felt tears well up in his own eyes listening to it all. It was tragic, and horrible, and yet, it was also so very, very common place. It was an every day sort of tragedy, the kind of tragedy that Quilo hated. He could accept a tragedy for a higher purpose, but this was an act of spite that had injured both parties. His thoughts went out to Ganymede right now—was Gany getting the comfort he needed after this blow? From the sounds of it, Gany had been trying so hard to be a good person. He’d been trying to be a good boyfriend, only to have those efforts wasted on someone who wished him harm.
On the other hand, there was Chries, someone who saw only cruelty in another person, who lashed out at them in an attempt to have an effect on them. It was every child’s dream, to track down their childhood bully and make them suffer in punishment for what they’d done. But in the very act of making Gany suffer, it was obvious that Chries had suffered too. He couldn’t just say that, though—he needed Chries to say it for himself. It was vitally important, in his admittedly limited experience, that people understand things for themselves without having someone forcing emotions on them. Having emotions forced on you could lead to bad things—bad things like what Chries had done.
Now came the hard part: figuring out what to say in all of this, and figuring out what the right thing to do next was. “It sounds like Ganymede has changed. You’re right. And I can understand why you’re afraid to apologize to him.” He sighed. “Time heals all wounds. I doubt you feel as hurt by his actions in the freshling dorms as you did at the time they happened. I have one more question to ask you before I give you my advice.” This would give Chries the push he needed and Quilo the time he needed to figure out a solution to this gnarly problem. “Why is this making you as upset as it is?”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 11:02 pm
Anchriesel couldn’t say that he’d expected any of these questions, but that last question was the biggest doozy of them all. Why was it making him upset? He thought again about the pressure cooker. About how Yaviss described him as a nice guy, but then went on to say that his spite was consuming him? Or whatever it was that Yaviss had said exactly? He didn’t have an answer to this last question. But he had come this far, and he was covered now with three wet handkerchiefs (where did Quilo keep them all?!), and he wasn’t going to turn back now, especially now that he was so close to salvation.
“I feel awful…because I made someone else feel awful. Because I never realized I had that power. I feel awful because I know that I am the reason now that someone else feels the same way I did as a freshling. Worthless. Powerless. I feel terrible because…because I’ve become the sort of person I hate. A bully. Someone who feeds on other people’s miseries. A total—” Here Anchriesel used a word that his teachers would not have approved of. It was, if anything, a little mild. He tried another one. Then another one. There was an archaic word that worked pretty well—one that was falling out of fashion as a swearword now that it was beginning to come mainstream. It probably didn’t apply to Anchriesel literally, but that didn’t matter. It felt right. It had the right cadence. “So…what should I do, Quilo?”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 11:03 pm
Quilo sighed. “Honestly, Chries…I’m not sure what you should do. I agree that it probably isn’t a good idea to talk to Ganymede right now.” Actually, Quilo wasn’t so sure about that, but he couldn’t bring himself to suggest talking to Ganymede. It might lead to…trouble. Besides, his own insides squirmed when he thought about confronting Ganymede for leaving him. Ella for leaving him. No! Anchriesel left Ganymede, dumped him, rather, so Anchriesel should not talk to Ganymede. Yes! Because of a queasy feeling in Quilo’s stomach. That was it. And not because of his own emotional baggage (no, go away, I unpacked you and repacked you a few minutes ago, buzz off!).
“We might have to rely on the old word-of-mouth or note passing to let him know that you’re sorry. But Chries, I’ve gotta warn you—it might not work. He might still reject you. The way I see it, there are three options here: one, he accepts your apology. I don’t think that’s likely—not for another few years, anyway. Maybe wait until he’s gone through another boyfriend or two, so that he’s more emotionally ready to be reminded of a painful relationship. Two, he doesn’t accept your apology and ignores you. That’s a pretty strong possibility, especially if Ganymede is the same guy you dated. The third possibility is that he’s not the same guy you dated, that he’s angry at you and he retaliates at you. I don’t think that one’s likely either, since he probably would have lashed out at you already if he was, but it’s still worth mentioning.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 11:04 pm
Anchriesel frowned. “You think my breaking up with him might have reverted him back to type?”
Quilo shook his head. “No. People can’t go back to who they used to be. They can become someone similar to who they used to be, but they can’t go back. Not really. Because now they’ve had experiences that changed them, and every change is an indelible mark on you. You can change the context of the mark, you can change the emotions associated with it, but everything you do—and everything that’s been done to you—leaves a mark that can never be erased. Not fully.” Quilo sighed. “I’m sorry, Chries. But you really messed up with Ganymede. You made a real hash out of that.”
Anchriesel sighed. “Yeah,” he said. “I did.”
But somehow, he felt better about it.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
