Day 1 | Memory Garden [Open]

[myblueskies]

Characters: Romeo and anyone
Format: Prose/action, you pick I'll match
This log is: open, come join him, paint some stones, have philisophical conversations...
Location: The edge of the forest, near the lake
Summary: People have been disapearing and Romeo is scared that he will forget them, even with some of their memories. So he is making a memory garden.
Warnings: Sadness, but it's Romeo so nothing too heavy

Romeo sat by the forest edge, near to the lake. It was a good place, with a nice view. Around him where a pile of sticks, which he had collected from the forest. A pile of stones that he had gathered from the lakeside, some string and some paint in different colours borrowed from a classroom.

He counted the people on his fingers. The people he had known who had disapeared, to be fed to the tiger or otherwise. Thirteen, thirteen that he had met, and he knew there would be more. But thirteen was a start.

Grabbing some sticks and string he began, soon he had a very messy cross and he stuck it into the ground. Since the school had stolen his memory of reading he could not write the names of his friends, but he took a rock and some paint and began painting. He wasn't a good artist, he had learnt that while trying to capture the blue skies for Angeletta. But soon he had a rough picture of a book.

He placed it next to the cross, For Kuchinawa. He would remember. He picked up another two sticks and wondered what picture he would paint for Molly.

Comments

[ergaleomancer]

"If you teach people for free, how will you afford food and a place to stay, Romeo? It's a nice dream, but it's utterly impractical." This was more familiar. Crushing dreams was something she did regularly. Except this time...she was doing it for his own good? Was that it? It felt like it, but at the same time, Theta was confused. Everything had become confusing since she'd gotten here.

"Or perhaps you'll teach the ones that can't afford it for free, but charge the ones that can. They'll get jealous, you know, and they'll start telling you they can't afford it either. Because why should they have to pay when others don't? How is that fair?"

[myblueskies]

"I'd get another job! Then I could afford to live and be able to teach people for free." He continued painting his rock, feeling weird, because it wasn't like usual. When people told him he couldn't do things it was usually because he was too small, or too young or not smart enough. But Doctor Casella had told him he could do anything and now Miss Buckley was saying he was unfair.

He didn't want to be unfair! He wasn't to be kind to everyone! To help make a world where children didn't have to be sold as chimney sweeps. "But if I had money, and could afford to go to school I wouldn't be jellous of the ones who couldn't afford it!"

"Utena," he handed the rock over. "Did you go to school sir? I guess you did, you're a noble lady right?"

[ergaleomancer]

She shook her head. "Teaching is a full-time commitment, Romeo. It takes eight hours each day in the classroom, plus many long hours at night in grading, planning, and preparation. Unless you magically don't need to sleep, you'd never be able to hold down a second job that would pay enough to live on. Doubly so if you intend to have a wife."

She kept her tone even and somewhat gentle. She didn't want him to think she was being cruel. Even when she was, she never wanted people to think she was cruel. That would ruin her ability to pull this with them. She couldn't crumble dreams if she didn't have people's trust.

"Perhaps you might manage it if you made your wife get a job as well as you, but...women are meant to run the home, nothing more nothing less..."

[myblueskies]

At Theta's words about his wife Romeo grinned. "You don't know many women do you! You should try telling my friend Bianca that she is meant to only run a home, she's going to be a nurse!" He grinned again, "And if you tried to tell Nikita she was meant to do anything she'd probably knock your teeth out!"

A moment later Romeo's eyes went wide as he realised that he wasn't teasing with the Black Brother's but talking to an adult! His smile faded and he edged away ever so slightly. "I'm sorry sir! I didn't mean to be rude. I'm sure your right, it will be hard." He stared at the ground for a moment. But then his eyes took on a slightly stubborn glint.

"But I promised Alfredo that I would realise my dreams, and the dreams he was not able to fulfil himself. So I have to become a teacher and help make a world where all children run free under the blue sky. Because you should always keep your promises, right sir?"

[ergaleomancer]

She laughed brightly when he stood up to her, and she shook her head when he apologised. "It's good to know you're a polite young man, Romeo, but I think I like your spunk more than your propriety," she admitted, reaching over to try to pat his back reassuringly.

"A nurse is a fine profession. Perhaps if you had a wife like Bianca, you might just manage to scrape by." What was she doing? What? She could have smacked herself. This wasn't how it went. She wasn't supposed to offer pointers, she wasn't supposed to back down until his dreams were smoking rubble! Just what had gotten into her lately?

...Oh right. Romeo was the one who dutifully called her 'sir', and every time she heard the word it warmed her icy heart. "It will be devilishly hard, all dreams worth dreaming are. But people are stronger than that, if they try to be. ...Would you like to see my hardest dream?"

[myblueskies]

Romeo wrinkled his nose, "Why would I want to marry Bianca! She's my friend!. But he was glad that Miss Buckley wasn't telling him he couldn't follow his dreams any more. He nodded at her final words, "Yes sir!" Maybe he could help her fulfil it, he liked helping people fulfil their dreams.

[ergaleomancer]

Theta had already seized her dream, but she lived with the proof of it every day. Her hands went to the top of her boot on her bad side. "Do you have a strong stomach, Romeo?" She'd dispensed with the formality on his name, seeing him as something closer to a friend.

[myblueskies]

Romeo tilted his head and nodded even though he was slightly worried about what Miss Buckley was about to show him. He knew she had been hurt because she walked with a stick and he bit his lip worried that she was still hurting.

[ergaleomancer]

She pulled her trouser leg up a bit, showing him the boxy mechanism fastened around her knee. As long as she left it closed, it just looked like a clockwork box of some type, with pistons on either side to support it and allow it to move at the hinge.

"My dream has always been to walk," she explained. "If I didn't dream that, then I would probably give in. And it's a difficult dream, every day."

[myblueskies]

"To walk?" Romeo leant fowards to see the box on Miss Buckley's knee. It didn't look like Grenn's legs and yet it didn't look like anything Romeo had seen before either.

"Does it hurt lots?" He asked, worry tinging his voice. "Why couldn't you walk before?" He dreaded the answer really, because when he had asked Grenn that she had told him a disease had eaten her legs, and that she was lucky because sometimes it ate peoples heads!

[ergaleomancer]

She wasn't going to just open it up and show him the inner workings of it. She tucked her pants back into her boot and smiled softly. "I exploded my knee. Most of what's underneath that box isn't there. It holds the bottom part of my leg onto the top part."

But given his concerned expression, she decided to tell him one lie. "It doesn't hurt much any more. Just if I overdo it."

[myblueskies]

"You exploded your knee!" Romeo's eyes were wide, he remembered the explosion in the prison, Theta had managed to explode her knee?

He looked at the contraption before it was tucked away again, it looked strange and like nothing he had seen before. "It's good that they managed to fix it like that, I'm glad that you can walk now!" It was nice when people where able to relaise their dreams.

[ergaleomancer]

She smiled for him, nodding her head. "It's a nice dream. One I have to dream every day or it will fade away again. My other dream...well, that's why I'm going to school~."

[myblueskies]

Romeo nodded with wide eyes, dreams where like that you had to keep dreaming or you would lose sight of your dreams. "What is your other dream sir?"

[ergaleomancer]

"To be the next High Ergaleomancer to the Queen~," she insisted, though she then winced when something triggered a haze of fog at the back of her head. Something was missing again, and she wasn't sure what even was.

[myblueskies]

Romeo blinked at the unknown word, "Ergaleoman...?" He asked, though he saw the wince and frowned slightly, wondering what was wrong.

[ergaleomancer]

"Ergaleomancer," she repeated, pushing on despite how uneasy that sudden realisation of how little she knew made her. She smiled for him, even, but this wasn't a pleasant smile of friendship, rather the polite smile of someone in upper class society who had to save face.

"Someone who makes the clockworks that run my homeland."

[myblueskies]

"Oh!" Romeo smiled, he had paused in his painting some while ago and was watching Theta with curiosity, "So you wanted to make clocks for the Queen? Do you have a king as well?"

[ergaleomancer]

"Mm, there's..." She tried to wade through the increasing fog in her brain, but had to admit defeat. "Another part to what the High Ergaleomancer does, but I can't recall... I suppose I'll tell you about it with a few more memory charms. There's no king any more, Her Majesty is a widow."

She smiled for him. Talking about home felt nice, and she was enjoying sitting here with him. Sure, this was a solemn sort of place he was building, but...they weren't roughhousing or otherwise disrespecting that.

[myblueskies]

A widow, that meant the king was dead. "She must be sad, if her husband died." Romeo made another silent promise to buy Theta some memory charms.

He went back to painting his rock and handed it out to Miss Buckley, "Tomoko," the rock was painted clumsily with a shoe. They had met because Tomoko had forgotten how to tie her laces.

"I thought you said that in your world women had to stay in doors, if you have a Queen can't she change that?"

[ergaleomancer]

"He died a long time ago. She's...had plenty of time to grieve," she explained, taking the rock and quietly thinking on the name before trying, getting the spelling right this time.

"Women don't have to stay inside, but...they can't have jobs or businesses, can't own or inherit property if they're married...the Queen doesn't see a reason to change that."

[myblueskies]

Oh, Romeo nodded, he guessed it was a little bit like that where he was from as well. But not always, after all lots of women worked, he wasn't sure about inheriting though.

"Is that why you want to be the Queen's clockmaker? So you can ask her to change it?"

[ergaleomancer]

She laughed at the idea, shaking her head. "Goodness no. It's because it's a prestigious position~. My father is the current High Ergaleomancer to the Queen, and I intend to be the next, that's all. And don't confuse clockworks and clocks. Clockworks are machines powered by winding them, the same way you wind a clock. But they can do nearly anything~!"

[myblueskies]

Romeo nodded still not fully understanding but he guessed that if her dad did something Theta would want to do the same thing, after all before Romeo went to Milano he wanted to be a farmer like his dad, and that was what he was expecting to do.

He nodded again, in his head he imagined a clock but huge and human size, with eyes, and feet and hands. A clockwork person, "Do you think you will be able to make the clock work people for the queen? Like your dad?"

[ergaleomancer]

She laughed at his understanding of clockworks, but nodded her head. "Yes. I've already made several. I'm the best of my generation, they say~. I'm going to graduate school with perfect marks and prove that I'm the best~."