un: grimm

[hagrides]

My roommate since I arrived in Lunatia one year ago, Lobco, has gone home. The apartment is terribly quiet without her, even though she was never the loud type. Strange how that happens.

Will you remember what has transpired here when you return? Do you wish to remember?

Comments

[manufactured]

People have different ways of responding to situations like that, in my experience. A change to the situation often changes the person.

It's fairly likely she'll manage, in some way or another.

[hagrides]

I appreciate the reassurance.

For my part, I do not intend to forget anyone I have met. Those memories will outlive even myself.

[manufactured]

I don't know whether I would prefer to or not. But then, I've never been a particularly sentimental person.

[hagrides]

I suppose it makes a difference how traumatic you find your stay here.

[manufactured]

I don't, personally. Quite the opposite. In my case, I would prefer that it not make returning to my own world more agitating than it needs to be.

It sounds as though your roommate got something positive out of being here, even if the world itself isn't precisely ideal.

[hagrides]

I would certainly like to think so. She seemed happier than when we met.

[manufactured]

Likely a good thing, then.

[hagrides]

Have any of those you've met here returned home?

[manufactured]

No one I've spoken to frequently. I've been fortunate in that regard, I suppose.

[hagrides]

Perhaps. Though I feel it is better to make such bonds in the first place and then lose them, rather than to not make them at all.

[manufactured]

It depends on how it happens. Losing someone to this world's whims strikes differently than losing them to something like betrayal, and is likewise different to losing them to certain death.

I find some of these things more tolerable than others. All unfortunate, of course, but there's rarely much loss that can be considered fortunate in any way.

[hagrides]

Would you prefer to lose someone to death or betrayal, I wonder?

I would prefer betrayal, but I understand I may be in the minority.

[manufactured]

I've lost many to both. There's less anger in losing people to death.

I suppose you prefer the notion that they're still alive despite everything because they were important to you at one point? Or is it something else?

[hagrides]

Were and are.

A dear friend of mine is in the process of working against the Ritual my life is devoted to. I believe he assumes that I don't know.

[manufactured]

There's someone trying to sabotage my own life's work. I wouldn't precisely call him a friend. "Someone I knew once," maybe.

[Chris is just kind of...someone who's there, and someone who irritates him, and someone who makes his life difficult. That's about as far as he lets himself consider his feelings on Chris. The negatives are a constant, whereas the positives are...nebulous.]

I doubt I could stay on positive terms with someone so determined to work against me.

[hagrides]

He has his reasons, misguided though they are. And I would not presume to make his choices for him.

[manufactured]

Will that put you in direct opposition to him eventually?

[hagrides]

If he continues to pursue this course of action, I will remove him from the troupe. But I would still have him survive, and live a happy life on the world we are currently visiting, without remembering any of his time with me.

[manufactured]

You're more merciful than I am.

The one working against me... Well, he and I are currently trying very hard to kill one another. Perhaps he would prefer me alive for the sake of getting information I have. But it's likely going to end in one of us dead.

[hagrides]

I am sorry to hear that. It is always a pity when former friendships must end in such a way.

[manufactured]

I'm rather used to them ending that way. This is no different.

[hagrides]

Do you never mourn for what might have been?

[manufactured]

I don't mourn anything.

[hagrides]

That is indeed a pity.

[manufactured]

Perhaps it is. I don't consider it to be such, but given what it is you do I can't say I'm surprised to hear that you do.