@marcos.diaz

[heliophilous]

with everything that's gone on lately, i had a question.

if given the choice, how many people would stay here and how many people would leave? i get that it's a pretty personal question and don't feel like you've gotta answer. i'm just curious considering the way the place has changed lately and the people that have been lost.

could you live your life here? or would you leave and take your chances?

Comments

[heliophilous]

i don't know what an attolian accent is so we might have some trouble finding more things in common.

besides being here, being stuck and being on both sides of the fence.

[kleptocratic]

Clipped vowels, softer consonants.

Do you have siblings?

[heliophilous]

only child.

[ thank god. no one else needed to be beholden to someone like this father. ]

[kleptocratic]

I have five.

[heliophilous]

that's a lot.

close with them?

[kleptocratic]

I don't believe they hate me. My favorite brother is the eldest, he was the one who taught me how to read.

[heliophilous]

i've heard different things about having siblings.

built in friends and you're never alone but you also don't get privacy or anything of your own. damned if you do, damned if you don't.

[kleptocratic]

Well, we were all raised in the children's quarters, together with all my father's sister's children and their father's sister's children and so on and on again. I'm the youngest of my siblings, but I had cousins of an age.

My cousins had terrible taste and were not very fond of me, and were always trying to punch my nose in or see if my hair would turn to snakes if you held my head under the fountain.

[ Eugenides neglects to mention that he did an awful lot to escalate these petty fights with his words. ]

So eventually they had to separate me, and gave me a space in the library, as there was nothing my cousins feared so much as a book.

[heliophilous]

they sound charming.

[ heavy on the sarcasm. ]

guess i missed out on a lot of fun stuff being an only child. but, even if i hadn't been, my father tossed me out when i was a kid. would have been a different story all around for me.

[kleptocratic]

For the record, my hair does not turn to snakes at all, even when it is very dirty. Which I know, having been to jail.

[ Where his hair got very dirty indeed. ]

My father has come very close to doing the same, but hasn't yet disowned me. It is a mark of dishonor on the man's name who turns out his sons.

[ Worse than his loads of boorish cousins. Though he sometimes plays at being the penniless street-urchin, Eugenides has had both family and status his entire life, and can't really understand what it would mean to be without either. ]

[heliophilous]

another difference there. i'm sure some people would look down on him for doing what he did but not everyone.

he did it and he's not the only one to have ever done it. just means you grow up very quickly.

[kleptocratic]

No, your honor isn't just what people think of it.

But you're right, men do it anyway.

[heliophilous]

their loss.

i liked being able to survive and throw it into his face.

[kleptocratic]

I would too.

He's still alive then?

[heliophilous]

no.

long dead.

burning in hell, probably.

[kleptocratic]

My mother died when I was ten.

I don't know where she is.

[heliophilous]

i try not to think about my family too much.

just puts me in a bad mood.

[kleptocratic]

Well, this has certainly been an uplifting change in topic.

I better understand why polite and boring people talk about the weather.

[ He feels bad though, really. ]

[heliophilous]

we can talk about the weather.
been pretty rainy lately, hasn't it?

[kleptocratic]

Yes. But at least there's no signs of plague.

[heliophilous]

small favors.