#ariarc

We are the stories we tell. We fulfill whatever prophecy we most fervently believe in.

Ariarc doesn’t remember writing those two lines, but there they are in the back cover of her journal, penned in her own handwriting with her favorite purple ink.

She tries to live by those words. When the sun fell and a new one took its place, she wrote of starting over. When she hitched a sail to her mountain and took off towards the sea, she wrote of grand journeys. When she befriended a vagrant who wandered drunk onto her property, she wrote of happiness and the unexpected places where it crops up.

How empty it all was.

The new sun is just as oppressively hot in summer as the old one, and always too bright for Ariarc’s eyes. The great sail, once a brilliant expanse of flowing white, has been torn and repaired so many times it’s more shabby patchwork than yew silk. Old age took Yava before the mountain - their mountain - even reached the coast. And the people of Wayward left, one by one.

Still, she tries. She sets out food for the stray cats that still live on her mountain. She does her best to keep the town hall in good repair, useless though she is with carpenters’ tools, and day by day she figures out how to patch its leaking roof and fill in the dents in its rotting walls. She doesn’t write at all for a long time - years, maybe - for fear that the loneliness and frustration might escape her heart and gain a foothold in something real.

Today is a difficult day. Nostalgia sits on Ariarc’s shoulders like a backpack full of bricks, but she stands firm. After all, the cats need feeding, the porch needs sweeping, and heaven knows the town hall must be a mess after the storm that just blew through.

She brings the cats their usual sack of dried fish, smiling in spite of herself at the chorus of impatient meows. She clears all the fallen branches off her porch in a matter of minutes. Regrets still gnaw at the back of her mind, but she gathers her tools and climbs the hill to the town hall.

The gaping hole in the roof and the plant debris littering the floor hardly come as a shock. All the same, Ariarc stands there frozen, choking back frustrated tears.

Stupid roof, of course it collapsed, of course my horrible patch-up job couldn’t withstand half a tree falling through it, what was I thinking, why am I so-

“Hello?” a voice calls. Something wet presses into the back of Ariarc’s knee. Behind her stands a dog, sopping wet and reeking of seawater. It gazes up at her expectantly.

“Hello,” it says again. “Are you alright?”

The absurdity of it all is enough to open the floodgates, and Ariarc collapses to the floor, tears streaming down her face. The dog prods at her back, still gazing expectantly.

“Can I… help?” it asks.

We are the stories we tell. We are the choices we make. We fulfill whatever prophecy we most fervently believe in.