Episode 27: Anticipation

TW/CW briefly implied sexual assault at line breaks.

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I never quite know what to do about the New Year. But I don’t mean with midnight kisses or other types of celebrations. In a good year, that feels like a… Well, like a luxury. And this isn’t a good year. What I mean is, I never know what to do about resolutions. That whole thing. And yes, I’ve heard about the alternatives--like the Theme System from CGP Grey--or that sort of thing.

I mean, well, how do we talk about those sorts of things? Let’s start there because that’s both the root of all my problems and also potentially a very personal experience that clouds my judgment. I grew up hearing that the new year was a time to make yourself better, but it wasn’t just about self-improvement. No, we should get more ambitious than that. And don’t ask me who ‘we’ is in that statement because I don’t fully know. The ‘New Year, New You’ mantra was meant to make your life better on the whole. It all started with you, after all.

And to a great extent, that’s true. I mean, I know I have my worse impulses. And I’ve seen that BoJack scene where his friend Todd has to explain, once and for all, that all of BoJack’s current problems stem from him. That he is the ultimate maker of his own undoing, and he should probably stop blaming his traumas for everything. Yes, they definitely shaped his beginning point, but he didn’t have to stay there. And I get it. We all have our hurts, and I do have a tendency of pointing to my very many traumas as a way of dodging any sort of self-awareness. 

But this is me now. And I’m trying to unlearn what I learned back then. Back then, I was knee-deep in those things that traumatized me. It was my circumstances that were ruining my life, so improvement could only come from escape, but escape was not possible. 

I have managed it now. And in some ways, trying to unlearn all of those horrible coping mechanisms is an important part of this whole process. And maybe that is my New Year’s Resolution. But it can’t just be. It-- Honestly, it really has to be something more, right? Like I need to change my life. Simply by making it about me. 

But being the main character in my own life is hard. It’s so much easier to hide.

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I did spend one New Year’s Eve at my aunt’s wedding. One of my aunt’s weddings, I could say, but she only ever had the one on New Year’s. 

And before you ask, I wasn’t a bridesmaid or anything like that. Yes, she did not have any sisters, and I was her only niece. But you still have to like your bridesmaids. Or I guess, now there’s services that let you hire stand-in bridesmaids. But they would have been better options than me because that’s a neutral relationship. Ours was a largely negative one. And I didn’t fully understand why. 

Well, I understood that it was a falling out that happened long before I was… Not born exactly. Before I was conscious. And not a sentient potato which is what I sometimes think babies are. Not in a mean way, though. Just in a ‘gage your expectations appropriately’ type way. 

So I didn’t understand. I couldn’t. And that bothers me.

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No one knew whether or not to believe the story behind the princess’s condition. On one hand, there is a degree of lying that you should expect to come from any royal family. In fact, the people need those sorts of lies to strengthen the foundation upon which their kingdom rests.  In addition, no matter what they were told, this would not be the first royal child born out of wedlock in the small kingdom’s history. It has always happened and will always happen, but with the crown prince newlywed and children presumably on the way, it was hard to care about this particular child--a child who would not be in the royal line of succession regardless of their legitimacy.

But then again, the prince was the most passionate defender of his father’s statement, and his animosity for his sister was well known. He hated his sister but loved the truth, so why would he have embraced this story if it were not the truth? Then again, and this was a critical mistake on the king’s part, allegedly it was a love match that made the child. And--the people thought though they could not say--could anyone love the princess? It seemed impossible, and yet, that was a critical part of the story the palace was telling. Or of the alternatives, one might add.

But there were other events that wouldn’t require such things. The people refused to entertain much thought of. For their own sake.

At the end of the day, really, none of it mattered. The princess was the responsibility of the current and then future king. It was just something odd to note, for right then, something for people to amuse themselves with while they awaited the birth of the heir’s heir. A birth that was coming very quickly.

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Normally, I was an usher or something, whenever my aunt got married. Whatever would generally classify as ‘free labor’ is typically what I would get assigned. I never complained. I wanted to for a variety of reasons, but the actual wedding work was pretty low on that grievance list. It was just the sort of thing I could complain about safely. 

Sure, the GiftedDuckling was willing to hear more. There were very specific things she wanted to know, but I wouldn’t tell her about them. Just about the wedding-specific stresses that were piling up in my life. And she listened, but maybe she knew what was coming down the road, after an unpredictable amount of time. Unpredictable but still inevitable. Not if but when is what I mean. That’s the more common version of that expression. 

I may not have told you, dear listener, what we were expecting because in some ways, it doesn’t matter if it matters. This is my podcast; I’ll say what I want, and right now, I want to say that the GiftedDuckling and I both knew what was going to happen, even if we couldn’t say it.

And we weren’t the only ones. There were people--people who knew the Queen, let’s say--who were trying to warn the guy about what my aunt was allegedly capable of. Yes, we had spent a great deal of my life running from her reputation, but it would never be all that far behind us, particularly when remnants of it were so diligently pursuing us. 

The Queen’s Knights, let’s call them, though they were real life people who never followed me onto the Forum. Or onto Symbolic Myst. I’m sure they had their own online habits, but none of them ever included me.

But anyway, nicknames are just placeholders after all. And maybe that’s what actual names are: placeholders because conveying the entirety of what a person is would be impossible. I always thought screen names were kind of like that. It feels more obvious or acceptable with them because half the time they don’t make a great deal of sense anyway. And so many times, you have to hook a bunch of random numbers or letters on the end to make something unique. Screen names have to be unique. Legal names sometimes aren’t. How odd. 

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The duchess was--in fact--pregnant with the prince’s child. It happened very quickly after the wedding but not so quick as to actually bother anyone. In fact, even if the child was conceived before the formal vows took place, the match was already set in stone. Both sides knew the wedding was bound to happen regardless, so there was no cause for concern. Only celebration. The duchess could, in fact, be having the future king. And even if she were not, even if she were having a girl like many in the palace claimed to have heard her say, it was still another barrier between the still feared princess and the throne. That alone was reason to celebrate.

Or--as far as the princess was concerned--reason for other things.

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The Queen’s Knights were so determined to invade the small fortress that was our family home. And not just literally get inside, mind you. With a judge’s signature, they could do that just fine, and they had managed it once before. Rather, they needed to invade the figurative fortress whose walls were made up of an ill-advised vow of silence amongst the four of us. Finding my aunt’s chest could have accomplished much the same thing, but somehow they didn’t. And I still, to this day, do not understand how anyone could mess up that badly. 

It might have been in the garage, but this chest was a cursed looking thing if there ever was one. Given the situation, given the context, it was the type of object the eye should have been drawn to. It was foreboding and clearly touched by deathClearly. But no, somehow they missed that. Once again, I still don’t know how.

And you know, this--this isn’t entirely relevant, but it bothers me. I don’t know why The Queen thought that--after that mess up of the highest order--I was ever going to be able to trust her. Even if missing the chest was just human error, in a situation where there really can’t be any error, trust was not going to take root in the face of that.

But to her and her Knights, I was the weakest link. I was a literal child. I could always be expected to break first. But I was a child with an abnormally strong survival instinct. Who maybe wasn’t the best at playing the odds but too afraid to take chances. 

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The princess found herself consumed by jealousy that the duchess’s pregnancy could be so well received by a populace that did not even know her. Whereas, her own pregnancy was met with rumor and scandal. She had avoided the worst of it, but that was not something she was inclined to acknowledge. Had she, had she given the matter more thought, she might have realized the role her sister-in-law played in saving her. But it was not in the princess’s way to be so reasonable. And hatred filled the space appreciation should have dwelt in.

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After the Knights, as it were, visited the GiftedDuckling, I would have expected her to be deterred. But she wasn’t. That had to be terrifying ordeal, and yet, it only pushed her deeper into my world. Her resolve grew, and she kept pressing me to admit all the things I knew about my aunt and her comings and goings.

Now, telling the GiftedDuckling wasn’t actually going to do anything. She couldn’t help me, but I think she was operating under the assumption that the first time was going to be the hardest. And I think a lot of people assume that. Really, any time you don’t want to do it is the hardest, and once you start telling people, there will likely have to be a lot of times when you may not want to talk about it but will legally have to.

That wasn’t really resonating with her. A lot of the details weren’t. Once again, there was an issue with scope. She knew things were bad but couldn’t seem to fully understand how bad and how bad things could get when we were trying to fix them.

But still though, the GiftedDuckling kept trying, twisting our game with a certain end in mind. 

“Wedding,” she once said to me. “I want you to write about a wedding.”

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The father of the princess’s child was still very much alive and heard the official story with a bit of amusement. But though he loved the princess earnestly, he could not give her situation much thought. She was safe, and so he was relieved from some of the paternal duties, freeing up his mind to think about other things. Like his hand. Like the open wound that should not have been there. The injury sustained during the prince’s wedding caused a great deal of confusion for the keeper of the eyes that lurked in the shadows. The gash had just appeared on his hand when his attention was directed elsewhere, at the prince who had seemingly injured his own hand but recoiled it unscatched. 

There was no reason for it. There was nothing of the sort that could have grazed him. His many weapons were tucked away, and he was alone in the distant pews along the side of the cathedral. There was cause for harm, and yet, clearly, harm had happened.

Magic, someone had said to him, in a tavern late at night. But no, the mysterious man thought, that couldn’t be.

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Aishi Online is a production of Miscellany Media Studios. It is written, edited, produced, and performed by MJ Bailey. With music from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. If you like the show please consider leaving a review or posting about it on a website that might not be around in five years. Make the post vague and somewhat mysterious but still compelling if you want. Up to you.

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