Bubble Burst 2

I am going to talk about larp. You will not understand, you do not know the characters, and you know what, that's fine. Just know that Hallore and Inlul are characters I not only hold dear, but also act/play two weekends a year each.

I'm starting to think the after-larp bubble burst is customary. I had one after playing Inlul, because Inlul is always happy, while the group I was in gave off one of the most strained and negative vibes you've come across. Furthermore, Inlul's built-in outlet was compromised, so the emotions simply had no place to go. Three days after the larp, I snapped and crashed. Bubble burst.

Last weekend, I had my first dab at playing Hallore in real life. I loved her. After a brief relapse into the juvenile behavior she's been so prone to around Daltor, she settled into the pragmatic farmgirl that I suppose she's always been. Her magic side has been pushed aside as not contributive, and she's now working at setting up fields of grain in coöperation with the local Guardian of the Woods, who is probably knowingly being used as an information source on how to exploit the ground responsibly. She sets some demands with it, like replenishing plantlife someplace else in return for the fields that need to be cleared, and Hallore will play along if it gets the job done.

I've even seen a brief episode of a different part of Hallore; the part that will not see an innocent unprotected, even if she doesn't act all Protector about it (in fact, she despises them, probably because from her perspective they have horribly ill judgement in regards to who are the innocents and who are the wrongdoers).

And in truth, Hallore probably was most at peace with the recent abrupt change in scenery and the bonus mind-wipe. Already she has adopted her arriving place in this new world as her place of origin, and she has firmly defended her view that, okay, she hadn't a clue what her parents' names were, but what did it matter? It didn't bother her, she said firmly. Then she continued doing everything in her power to feel useful and busy at all times, so as to not let it bother her. Borrowing a knife helped; it boosted her sense of usefulness tremendously.

But now, things are getting redundant, and only so many preperations for the farm can be taken without tools, or grain, or able manpower. In a sense, she remembers more about who she was than the others. Probably because she doesn't strain her inexistant memories for a clue as to who she was. She simply looks for who she is now.

She knows how to drive a man crazy, in virtually every sense of the word, without ever having to touch him, in virtually every sense of the word. She knows how a field of grain should be harvested. She knows gods are among us, though local beings of morality disclaim the existance of such. Hallore knows for a fact that small animals can be just as dangerous as big ones. She knows women dating women is as good as normal.

She knows she's all bark and no bite. Or maybe just a little bite.

But most of all, Hallore knows beyond the shadow of a doubt that most important of all, more important than your personal health, more important even than life itself, are your friends. Friends and family.

And only now it's beginning to sink in that she doesn't have either of those any more.

So when she has time to think on it, like when she's trying to catch sleep or waiting around for someone to need someone, she gets horribly sad, for reasons she doesn't immediately understand. After all, her first thought upon arriving in this new world was a simple one: A new beginning. It was a happy thought.

But why, if friends and family are the most important of all, and betraying them is the cruellest sin of all, would she be happy to leave them behind? Why had even the fact that she would hold no memory of them not bothered her in the slightest when she made that crossing? In the end, there can only be one answer. They all betrayed her.

For all her new beginnings, for all her forgetting, she puzzled out just what she wanted to forget. A gross betrayal by everyone she ever held dear. It was the only logical solution.

And by the gods... Oh... Well, by the angels, anyway...

It hurts.


Think on it,
Erane