lucetilogs | School Log!

Entry tags:

School Log!

Who: OPEN! Anyone! Teachers, Students, anyone dropping in for the open classes, anyone at the battledome (from about 1-3 pm), newcomers with questions, etc!
What: Catchall school days
When: March! (You can vary the dates if you'd like, if you want something from last week or on the 17th and onward, it's fairly open there.)
(Classes run from 9 AM-roughly 2:30 PM, and the log can include before and after-school activities)
Where: School / Battle Dome
Summary: It's been a quiet few weeks in Luceti, but school is still in session!
Rating: A+

[For some sense of guidelines:

- Anyone joining for the first time is allowed to poke around and ask questions and (possibly) take or have handwaved taking a test so they can join in immediately!

- The playground is open for after school or lunch break interactions. The cafeteria is also open. Also, random classrooms are available for students wanting to use it for private tutoring/study hall sessions/club meetings whatnot.

- World Sharing and Magic lessons are held at the battle dome, so non-attendees can observe if they like.

- You're not limited to the headers! Just do what you want--these are just some suggestions as to what's going on, but they aren't the be-all-and-end-all of what can be played with! Chat with each other, set up things! It's meant to be for CR!]

As always, please add your character to the roster here and update if there are any changes! Also, students/magic class participants, please respond here when you have a chance! Thank you!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

What's stopping you from deciding?

[It's not accusing or demanding, his tone- it's quiet, calm, and simply asking because he doesn't understand. There's pretty clearly more to this than he's aware of, especially since he knows literally nothing about this girl. In a world like this - with infinite universes and possibilities and people from any number of them - it could be some deeply-ingrained issues or hell, even a physiological or biological... programming, for lack of a better term. He's the soul-kid of a robot, he knows there's all kinds of potential for problems here.]

[Here? In this town? Nothing but herself.]

I just...I can't. My story only has one possible ending.

[No matter what she tries, she is doomed to have no love at all outside of that which she demands from Mytho - as she can't give his back to him and let him choose. It will destroy him.]

I don't believe that it's possible for a story to only have one ending when it isn't written yet. When it hasn't happened.

[He's a reality bender by nature, even if not by practice anymore. Changing things as they happen is something he has to believe in to live; it used to come to him as simply as breathing.]

But it has, and it will. Duck- she was from later on, and she knew. And...

[Why are you telling him?

Maybe because no one ever asked before.]

...I just- hurt people. Even when I want to make them happy.

[He frowns at that. It's familiar, those words; he's said them himself, not that long ago. It's why he's only coming back to magic class now, after months of avoiding it. It's why he's still feeling the ache of guilt just by thinking about it.]

You can't... let yourself fall into that line of thinking. If you've hurt people, or... you've heard that you're going to hurt people... then accept it, and learn from it. But after that, you have to work on making up for what you did to hurt those people. Use what you know to prevent it from happening again.

[Without telling him everything, cover to cover, Rue believes there is no way he'll really understand. She still can't wrap her head around why he wants to try.

Now that she knows what it's like to live a life with love in it, not the kind she has to force and declare but that someone would just give her, because they thought she should have it...it's even harder to face the world she has to return to someday.]

It's too late. There isn't anything I can do now.

[That, he can't believe. It just feels wrong.]

You said... your story only has one ending. Doesn't that mean it isn't over yet? Why isn't there anything you can do?

I've already done it!

[Forgetting Billy doesn't know the whole story at all, forgetting he's basically a stranger. That he shouldn't care - at least that one she can argue with, because it seems he does - and that he shouldn't get involved with someone like her. It can't end well for him.]

Everything I tried just destroyed him! I couldn't make him happy and I couldn't make him love me.

[Even without knowing the whole story, the more she gives him, the more he's starting to understand. Piece by piece, the puzzle becomes a picture.

This helps. God, his mother's been right all along.]

See, that... you're just setting yourself up to fail right from the start. You can't make someone be happy, and you can't make someone love you. It's impossible to control the emotions of another person.

He didn't have any until this started.

[The Prince is the only person who could ever love someone as ugly as you.

Rue swallows hard; the truth about who she is brushes against her father's words and pulls him out of the possibility of loving her. Not too long ago she realized he never did.

It's easier to talk about Mytho's missing heart than to admit out loud that she'll be alone forever if Billy is right and she loses him.]

[It's too vague; too many missing pieces, now. Her conflict is full of references to people and experiences he has no knowledge of, and he can't do much else but helplessly listen.

Sometimes it's better to be direct. So, quietly-]

Maybe... you should start at the beginning. Will you tell me?

[Something terrible has obviously happened to her. Hiding it or dodging around the issue isn't going to help anyone.]

[There's too much to tell. Most of it happened inside her head, or in the Raven's domain, or in a past she still holds tenuously like the string tying her to herself might break if she reaches for the best parts.

The best parts are few and years between.

Rue only knows one way of recounting something in summary.]

Once upon a time, there was a prince who fought a monster raven and gave up his heart so the raven could be sealed away forever. The raven had a daughter, a raven princess trapped in a human body, and it was her fate that she could only find love with the prince himself. But in shattering his heart, he lost himself, his emotions and feelings, becoming an empty shell in life.

So he could never really love the raven's daughter, no matter how much she tried to please him and make him happy. When in the course of the story he recovered some shards of his heart, he began to find the seeds of love for another, instead.

[The whole time she looks Billy in the eye, as if daring him to stop her, to comment and pass judgment on how obvious it all was.]

When the raven princess discovered the shard that contained his love, she vowed to make him hers and hers alone, using a raven's dark and terrible power.

[The hardest part about this - and this place, really - is knowing when something is a metaphor or a literal story. He's the magically-made son of a witch and a robot dating a dual-alien shapeshifter. He's friends with immortal demigods. A raven girl isn't that farfetched.

He listens intently, taking it all in and trying to decipher it based on what he already knows.

Still not enough, though.]

What did the princess do?

[There's no judgment. Not now. He's done too much himself to be able to do that to her. But he doesn't know, and he wants to. This is important.]

She bathed the shard of his love in her raven father's blood, so he would become like her... [Rue swallows once, dry.] Because she knew the taste of raven's blood from childhood. If it could enter the prince's heart, he would realize that he loved only her, and nobody else.

[The beauty and scar of Gold Crown is that all of its tales are both myth and reality.]

Instead, the prince became wicked and cruel, and the pain of his tainted love grew within him until he grew feathers and sad, empty golden eyes, and the raven princess...was the only person who could love a hideous, ugly bird that was once a man.

[How perfect it all was, a perfect tragedy: a boy, trapped as a crow, bound to a crow, trapped as a girl.

Except the girl was never a raven at all.

Rue doesn't seem to notice her narrative shift, fixated as she is on the classroom floor.]

My father didn't let me taint his love so we could be together. He did it so my prince could join him and serve him and bring him an innocent heart, that he might take it and free himself of his bonds.

[...That's... kind of terrifying. He can't quite conceal his reaction; eyes wide, jaw dropping, though after a moment he lifts a hand to cover his mouth. Okay, so... she's openly admitted it now, at least. They've moved past the metaphorical "my friend has this problem and it's totally not me" denial stage. That's pretty good.

But okay, this is some creepy dark magic they're dealing with, here. And now that he knows it's literal - or at least it sounds literal - the whole heart shards thing is really familiar. Where has he heard that before...?]

So how does the story end?

[What's this terrible ending she thinks she's doomed to have?]

Duck told me that she saves him, so that he can save me. [From some undefined horrible thing besides her bad decisions and loneliness. Something worse.] But after that, how could he not choose her? All I've ever done is cause him pain and heartache, and all I knew about myself was a lie.

[Duck... Duck. That name is so familiar.

....

Oh god. Oh god. The shard- the heart shard- that thing Teddy's had in his-

Holy crap. This is the other side of that story. He takes a moment for that to sink in, eyes wide. All of that was because she...

...wow. This is one screwed up situation he stuck his head into, not once but twice.]

Okay... two questions. One: do you think that saving someone automatically makes them love you? And two: even if that's true, and that's how the love story ends, what about the rest of your life?

[Uninvolved as she is with restoring Mytho's heart, Rue doesn't know most of what has happened with the shards; she just finds out some mornings that another one appeared.]

Mytho is the rest of my life. He's the only one who could ever love someone like me. ...Without him I don't have anything.

[...Is this a teenage girl thing? He is so super out of his league here if that's the case.]

Look, I understand that... losing the one you love, however it happens, can feel awful. It can... make you feel like your life is over. Like theres nothing left.

[The memory of Teddy, limp and visibly dead and bleeding is a sight that will never, ever leave him, and the madness that had followed as a result will haunt him just as long.]

But you can't let your whole life revolve around one person. You don't know that he's the only one because your life isn't over. You're still living. And there's millions of other people in the world. In the universe. There's so much potential, but first you've got to love who you are. And I reiterate: saving someone else does not make them automatically soulmates or anything. My love life would be way more complicated if that was the case.

[As she suspected, it seems impossible to make anyone else understand. Something tightens hard in Rue's chest, so quick and sharp that her hands rise to cover it.]

But I do love him. With...with my whole heart.

[She doesn't want or need anybody else to love.]

[Well. Love, at least, he can understand. Even if the thought of hurting someone to keep them is...

...okay, he can understand that, too. To an extent. But he doesn't think that saying, "I did that too when I was crazy" would be helpful in this instance.]

Have you... you know... told him?

Of course I have. [Rue shakes her head, at last finding a desk to sit in, uncertain of her legs for the first time in a very long time.] But loving him and wanting his love in return...have only hurt him. He doesn't deserve something so terrible.

See... the thing about dealing with other people, is... they get to decide whether or not they deserve you. It's kind of amazing, really- how highly someone can think of you, when... all you see in the mirror is garbage.

[He glances down, hands clasping and unclasping in discomfort. He thinks about it so rarely now, or at least he makes an effort to try not to, but... well, it always does come back, doesn't it?]

A while ago, I... I almost killed the person I love. There's no excuse for that kind of thing, no way to apologize. It hurt us both. It hurt a lot. And I thought... no matter what I'm feeling, it can't compare to him, right? After a betrayal like that... how could he choose to love me when I'd broken his trust so completely? Who would?

[Though Rue did not kill Mytho, turning him into a giant crow servant of the Raven was as good as. No amount of pity he might feel for her could change how dangerous her love was, how all an ugly worthless girl like her could do was hurt people.]

I was...going to do something that might have killed him. To- to free him from growing any worse, any more cruel and selfish and dangerous. ...It can't be undone, the things I did and said.

No, it can't. It never can. But the whole point of making mistakes is so you can learn from them- get stronger, become better. If you really regret what you've done, it means you're not a monster. And it also means that you can apologize and try to make amends, whatever way you can.

[He steadfastly believes that. Even if Teddy hadn't forgiven him, even if it had been impossible for them to stay together, he'd have wanted to do something more than just apologize. Giving up... it just isn't in him anymore. And he doesn't want to encourage it in others, either.]

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