'Questions don't have to make sense, Vincent,' said Miss Susan. 'But answers do.'
Sometimes, in quiet moments, Susan Sto Helit reflects that even by the standards of a flat planet borne on the backs of four elephants standing on the shell of the great galactic turtle A'Tuin, the twists and turns her life has taken have been exceptionally strange.
You're a schoolgirl, normal except for the untameable white hair and an unnerving affinity for rounders, field hockey, and lacrosse. Then you're filling in for your grandfather, who happens to be Death himself. Scythe, pale horse, and all.
You're a governess, much like any other apart from the ability to take out bogeymen and night horrors with the nursery fireplace poker. Then you're saving the life of a great old god and skewering the maddest assassin who ever lived with that poker.
You're a schoolteacher, respected if a bit feared, and also with a tendency to take the kids on field trips far beyond the usual jaunts to Pseudopolis Yard and the Patrician's Palace. Then you're saving the universe again, and your new boyfriend is the embodiment of Time.
Then you're attending a school for magic, where your best friends include a winged goddess who used to be mortal, a teenage boy with a life so dramatic it actually frightens you a little, and a ship's surgeon. There's the assassin again, and all his friends, and trouble unlike any other you've experienced, even more dramatic, in its own way, than saving the universe. And then, unexpectedly, a friendship with a fiery idealist lost from his own time, which turns into love almost before you know it.
And then when you find yourself trapped in a magical theme park, certain you'll never see them again, you find them: the goddess, the boy, and your love. And before you know it, you've assembled a strange little family: you, your love, a brilliantly imaginative little boy and his tiger, and sweet little girl with a steel spine. And you're happy in a way you never thought you'd be.
You know it can't last, though; that hard flinty thing in your nature that you get from your grandfather reminds you of that. So does the disappearance of the little girl; it's an intimation that every chapter in life must come to an end, and someday you'll be forced to turn the page and go on to the next one.
And the page turns, and one day-no one is sure exactly when-the First Aid Station is empty.
((And with that, I bid farewell to my longest-standing RP character. We've come a long way and, as several of you know very well, have been through quite a bit together. She'll be back, somewhere or somewhen else, and in my fic, but for now-adieu, and thanks.))
You're a schoolgirl, normal except for the untameable white hair and an unnerving affinity for rounders, field hockey, and lacrosse. Then you're filling in for your grandfather, who happens to be Death himself. Scythe, pale horse, and all.
You're a governess, much like any other apart from the ability to take out bogeymen and night horrors with the nursery fireplace poker. Then you're saving the life of a great old god and skewering the maddest assassin who ever lived with that poker.
You're a schoolteacher, respected if a bit feared, and also with a tendency to take the kids on field trips far beyond the usual jaunts to Pseudopolis Yard and the Patrician's Palace. Then you're saving the universe again, and your new boyfriend is the embodiment of Time.
Then you're attending a school for magic, where your best friends include a winged goddess who used to be mortal, a teenage boy with a life so dramatic it actually frightens you a little, and a ship's surgeon. There's the assassin again, and all his friends, and trouble unlike any other you've experienced, even more dramatic, in its own way, than saving the universe. And then, unexpectedly, a friendship with a fiery idealist lost from his own time, which turns into love almost before you know it.
And then when you find yourself trapped in a magical theme park, certain you'll never see them again, you find them: the goddess, the boy, and your love. And before you know it, you've assembled a strange little family: you, your love, a brilliantly imaginative little boy and his tiger, and sweet little girl with a steel spine. And you're happy in a way you never thought you'd be.
You know it can't last, though; that hard flinty thing in your nature that you get from your grandfather reminds you of that. So does the disappearance of the little girl; it's an intimation that every chapter in life must come to an end, and someday you'll be forced to turn the page and go on to the next one.
And the page turns, and one day-no one is sure exactly when-the First Aid Station is empty.
((And with that, I bid farewell to my longest-standing RP character. We've come a long way and, as several of you know very well, have been through quite a bit together. She'll be back, somewhere or somewhen else, and in my fic, but for now-adieu, and thanks.))