[Talia]

Chapter 1:
The Mother, the Father, and the Lost Ones
This is, of course, almost all remembered off the top of my head. It’s been bothering me, since I arrived here, a week or more ago. I don’t remember the exact date I woke up. I’ve been too lost. To dazed. But I need to write it all down, now. I need to get it out of my system.


Let’s start by saying that I’m not sure how much of this is even true, or just memories that are forming as a fragment of what ~was~ true in the back of my head. This is me, alone, avoiding sleep, staring into the fire in the inn and wondering just how much is true and how much is a pain in my ass. But this is it. This is my life story, that I recall.

There were four of us, living in the city together. Two young boys, my husband, and me. It was a perfectly mundane, normal life; I ran a book store, he sold fortunes, and our children did what all children do. I’d put my age at around twenty-nine, now.

We met earlier, when I was still travelling after the academy and trying to decide what I wanted to be. He was in the woods, and we fought bandits together. I used what talents I had, he used his brute force; together we did good. We weren’t heroes. We took payment. We laughed, and cried, and got hurt. I remember breaking my arm, and him setting it with leather straps and sticks. I remember him being scared of the machines in the city, and laughing at him to grow up. He was how old, again?

The first born was the sign that we should settle down. We found a place we enjoyed, one that was prosperous and right, and we set up our shop. I sold books; carefully picking and choosing what I thought was interesting, and teaching reading and writing to young children. I hated teaching. I had no patience, but I learned, as our child grew older. I calmed down. My fire dimmed.

I remember we fought about what he could do. The damned knuckles. He wasn’t pulling in much money. The world was changing; but I loved him. I couldn’t demand him to change. He watched the children, I worked, and occasionally, he threw the bones.

The second child was planned. It was our last. I hoped for a daughter; it was a boy. I remember Teddy’s face, when he held them both in his arms. I remember the tears. I also remember the sheer bloody fucking pain from birth. Doubt that’d leave me any time soon.

It was a fast recovery; we’d gotten a Shentarran to come and help us. Their magics, their healing, kept me from going insane. I don’t remember how, but I know that after that, we had no more children. Conscious choice.

I remember our walks in the woods. Teaching our boys how to swim. I remember laughing as they caught toads with their father, scolding as they hit each other with stick ‘swords’. I remember parts of our world, of our existence. The eldest was so studious, like me. He learned cantrips very early on - I remember encouraging him. I was saving up to send him to the Academy. To learn, to be like me.

The youngest, he was a earthworm, like his father. Always dirty, always in the plants. He loved our little garden. He loved watching the soldiers march by. His dad taught them both how to use a sword, from his own knowledge. And the truth is, I was terrified of it. What if they’d joined the army? What if they’d gone off and gotten hurt?

I’ve been wandering around, now. I remember parts of this place. Am I going to find our shop? Am I going to find our house, their bodies? My body?

The scar in the Academy shook me. I remember seeing the building on the outside before. I must have studied there. Was I part of that? Did I help with it? I can’t say. What I can say, is that I will find them. Dead, alive, something in between - I don’t care. They’re my family. They need graves. I need closure. I need to see them again. To hear them again. To hold them, again.

I have the dream about twice in a week, and it’s been going on since I first came out of the Well. It keeps repeating, and I keep trying not to sleep. We’re at the house, in the shop. Something happens. The door is knocked down, the house shakes. Books fall off the shelves. I hear screaming from behind me, clanking feet on the wood. I scream, start to throw what spells I know, but the world goes black. I hear screaming. It ends. I don’t want to remember more.

When I woke up in the Well, I came out covered in wounds on my chest, my arms, my back. I nearly bled out, crawling from the entrance. I spent some time healing, before I was sent out. I met Nergui, I explored the world, I learned about the Scars. I learned that it’s familiar.

I don’t want this to be familiar.

I don’t want them to be here. I don’t want to see them, shattered and broken on the floor. Teddy, his skull caved in; or my children, torn to pieces. I’ve been honing what Power I can pull, learning the intricate weaves and the various designs. Some of it is familiar; I remember the lower-circle spells like I’d done them before. Others, the more powerful ones, I have no memory of. It’s familiar but different. And I will continue to study, to improve, to learn them.

What will I do with this Power? What will I do with this world, shattered and broken?

I am not a hero. I am not someone who will join the Reeves, the Millers, the Dredgers, without reason. I am just a person, a lost and scared individual. I don’t care about anyone else; I want my family. To hell with the Well, with these people, with everything they think they stand for. The world has ended. I don’t give a damn about them. They can survive without me.

We were paying off our shop. We had a little garden, where we sold vegetables. I was dabbling with alchemy, using what knowledge he and I knew of the local herbs. It wasn’t a perfect life. It wasn’t a grand, wondrous existence. It was normal. It was perfectly safe. It was everything we could ever have wanted.

What would they get with me, here? Someone who used to teach, who knows a few cantrips. They have more useful Risen to deal with. I’ll do my part in hunting Scars, and that’s it. Token service. To fuck with their expectations. To fuck with this ‘better future’. I don’t care about the future. I want the past.

‘Live for the future, for there is naught but sorrow behind you’. What sort of future is it, without them?

I just want my family back.

[Talia]

Chapter 2:
The Cynical Believer
This might come as a shock to you, but I barely believe in anything anymore. Shentar, Aer, the Sleeping Gods - maybe they all exist. The Sleeping Gods certainly existed; I know that because Thaddius worshipped one of them. I remember his little shrine to this day, with the strange statue and the odd rituals he’d perform. But.. Myself? I never ~believed~.


I also never wrote my name. Emery Waldman. Before I married, it was Emery Turner. Most people just call me ‘Em’. I used to own the bookstore, ‘Natural Selection’, before all of this went down. It was a fine little shop. I sold history, arcane, fiction, any kind of book I could get my hands on that I thought was at least half-written competently. And he - Teddy - sold his woodworking charms and fortune readings.

On the weekdays, between dawn and mid-day, I would teach letters and watch children in the City. Tell stories. Teach history lessons. I only barely remember any of it, now. The vaguest idea of everything I read, everything I experienced. Some of it is so clear. So vivid.

I remember waking up one morning, staring into the mirror of our bedside table. I thought of the teachings of Shentar as Scholar, and saying - without hesitation, “You are not perfect, and you never will be.”

It stung to admit. I won’t lie. I never truly believed in Shentar, or anything of the sort; but I’d been raised in the culture. I’d been raised with the idea that you could, through enough training and discipline, achieve - just for a moment - perfection. I stared into the mirror, thinking of all the books I’d collected, all the knowledge I’d hoarded, the teachings I’d done, the good I’d tried to perpetrate. I wanted to not just be a hoarder of knowledge; no. I’d wanted, at that time, to be a teacher.

To be someone who could show others understanding. Enlighten their lives. It’s why I’d travelled, why I’d done what deeds I had done up to that point. I had put my feet to the ground after Academy and gone out to collect all the obscure knowledge and arcana I could find, getting dragged into countless random adventures along the way - and for what?

I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes, even as Teddy came up behind me, and kissed the back of my head. “You don’t have to be perfect,” he said. “You just have to be mine.”

And that’s what. I could feel myself calming down. I could feel the tension leaving my shoulders, as I watched him in the mirror. He was off to go make breakfast for Bryce and Aurelius, to feed the boys, and tend to his tasks for the day. I smiled. I relaxed. I felt - content.

I can still feel that contentment now, however long it’s now been. I can still remember the touch of his lips to the back of my head. The calm confidence of his statement. The cocky swagger as he walked from the room, sticking out his tongue at me as I flipped him the Imperial One-Finger Salute and laughed.

It was a mundane life. It was a mundane existence. We were not great people; I did not do great deeds, no matter how much I had originally wanted to. My belief in Shentar died, as my love and devotion to my family grew.

They’re out there, somewhere. In Cohecium, in another city, I do not know; but somewhere, Natural Selection sits, and my family with it. I have to find them. I have to find a way to get to them. To be with them again. I remember them, I remember them so clearly, so heartbreakingly well. I can still hear their voice and see them when I close my eyes. It hurts. It hurts to know that they might not be there.

But I have to believe that it’s possible. I have to force myself, despite the stares and scoffs of the other Risen, that they could be alive. If they’re not here, then they’re in another city. Somewhere. I can find them.

And so I look to darker paths. In the past, I would never have worshipped a Sleeping God. They want nothing more than to bring the darkness of the Before Times back to the world, to shatter and destroy the existence that we know and love. To take reality and break it over their knees like a bundle of sticks, just to do it. Probably without even trying.

But I have to find my family.

I remember, in the back of my mind, a name. A god whose name was whispered among the Academy’s fellows, when the teachers and scholars weren’t looking. As’toiel, the Master of the Mystery. It was under her gaze that the greatest detectives worked, that the most wondrous thieves could do the most impossible heists. There was nothing impossible, nothing you could not know. Nothing you could not discern. If you worshipped them.

I dabbled, in my youth. It was through her guidance that I could read the Cards, and discern their mysteries to predict or guide as might be. I forsook her, in the face of Shentar and seeking to perfect myself rather than rely on another - but I have no time for that, anymore. I must find my family. I must be with them.

The ritual is simple. You offer unto her a problem to be solved, a puzzle, a distracting tidbit of information, anything that can’t be immediately discerned. And then, you light the candles, and you wait.

And I’ve already done it. I’ve spoken with her, through her own means. Through the means of the Cards. Through the help of the bones.

My reading was - interesting.

The message was clear enough. I was feeling depressed, hopeless, drawn. It talked of the nightmares and stress that I’ve been having, the horrible depression that’s beset my life; and how I’ve been stuck in a rut. Unable to move. But I can push past that rut, past the danger. If I but sought the right question to ask.

And that question is - why not ask for help? Why not seek what assistance I could, even from a Sleeping God? I could not be Shentar as Scholar. I could not be what is perfect, when I am anything but. Teddy worshipped a Sleeping God. And I might do the same.

So. I will do it. I will seek out mysteries, solve them, and through the solving of these mysteries - I will learn my own question. And in time, my own answer. As’toiel, Master of Mysteries, sleeps in the plains; hidden beneath the great nails. Their sexless form, forgotten and as mysterious as that which they collect. I wish for them to awaken. To help me answer my burning desire; where is my family? How can I get them back?

I remember, I told Thaddius once, “You’re a fool for worshipping a Sleeping God. They’re as dangerous as a hurricane.”

He laughed, and said I just didn’t understand. And now, as I sit here, alone, I understand. I do. He was appeasing his god, to keep them from waking, to keep nature in check and in balance. I don’t want that, though. I want them to wake. I want them to rip this horrible world apart, and tear reality to fucking shreds. I want them to pluck out the mysteries of this world, to hold them before me, and to tell me - TELL ME - how to get them back.

One card reading at a time. One mystery at a time. A throw of the bones, a mysterious spell, whatever I can do. I will find them. I will find my family, my store, my home. I will rip the answers from the Chem of the city itself, if I have to. To fuck with the consequences.

I remember their faces, Bryce and Aurelius. Bryce, with his hawk-like nose and curling hair, standing like a thin bean as he read whatever book he could get his hands on. Always clean, always so soft. So gentle.

Aurelius, the polar opposite. Two years his younger, but taller, thicker, the brawniest eight-year-old out there. And he knew it. Running around on all fours, coming back covered in mud, spending time learning to play swords and axes with his father.

I want them back. I want to hold them, to kiss their heads, to feel them against me. I want to see them in peace and free. I want to remember every moment I’ve ever had with them, to feel the mystery of this place lift and find that I am, once more, back with them. To be home.

Would they remember me? Would they be as lost as I am, now, in this place? In this hell? Would they be… dead? I have to believe, to wonder, that they might be alive. That they could yet exist, and prosper. That I could find them, hold them, love them, be with them.

As’toiel, I will serve you. I will do what I can to offer you mysteries, to offer you my hand as your instrument. I will give what I can to solve this. To answer this question. And to hell with the rest of them.

I want my family back.

[Talia]

Chapter 3:
Questions, but Never Answers
So much happened in the last few days. So many things, little and large. But it was only the previous morning that the most interesting - the most important - thing happened. I visited the City. I saw the streets.

I remember them being full of people, of faces, of travelers. Wares in the stalls, laughter and anger and a well of other emotions that were countless and uncountable. You could see - you could FEEL - the sheer weight of the city around you, just by walking through that street. Teddy hated it.

Now? It’s empty. It’s gone. There’s no life, but the mindless servitors that wander the streets. Draugr and Twang seemed to think this was how it had always been. This is how they’d always seen it. How long had it been like this? Skittering with mechanical monstrosities, militant overlords, and little else?

I didn’t see my shop. I don’t know if it’s at this gate, or elsewhere, but it’s in this town. It is here. It is somewhere. I wanted to look, to ask them to help me find it - but they were insistent that it was dangerous. I can’t endanger others. I can’t endanger anyone more than just myself, for such a selfish goal. But I have to find my shop. And in that shop, in my bookstore, my family waits.

The Master of Mystery has not been silent. They come to me in my dreams, taking what mysteries I have seen in the world and plucking them from me, replacing them with gifts of their own. And it's these gifts, these fragments of knowledge, that I plan to step forward and truly begin the process. To truly begin to push forward in my search for them.

Weaves of patterns for spells I never learned. The flow of Power that whispers from the arcane monstrosities that walk the streets of my former home. I can see their weaknesses, their fragmentary existence. I can see my own way forward. To them. To my children. To my husband.

I have seen and not seen the God twice, now, in the previous nights. Since I began praying to them, my dreams of mundanity and horror have changed to that of strange, shapeless rooms of organic architecture and twinkling lights. Horrible sounds of pistons and screams echo from the walls, while a dull throbbing heartbeat penetrates your very soul with every movement you take. And then, there is the God.

As’toiel takes three shapes, to represent the three times of day; the morning, as a blessed woman with golden hair and flowing, sparkling eyes. As’toiel Mor’delle, Morning Star and Keeper of Eternal mysteries. Patron of detectives, investigators, and researchers; shedding light upon what was known but is now mystery, spreading her hands and her ways through the whispered questions we dared not ask.

Then, there is the evening; A dark-faced old man, cruel and wirey, with long, sickly fingers and greedy black eyes. The very air that he gives off, this As’toiel Zera’dro, the Evening Star, is one of untrustworthiness. You can sense, and almost taste, the oily nature. It is only fitting that he is the keeper of plots, the deviser of schemes, and the master of thieves. Pickpockets, heisters, and worse worship such a god, wishing only to take what they can without anyone knowing.

And the third form. The Lost Hour, As’toiel the Forgotten. Formless mist, vaguely shifting into familiar shapes before adjusting and shifting into something you can almost remember - but never truly. Keeper of the mysteries that we have forgotten, of lost memories and hidden truths. Patron of the Risen, I suppose. This is whom our memories go, pulled away and horded as it slips its fingers into our lives to take what we know when we die. Collecting our experiences, our talents, our lives - leaving nothing for us to do but pray that through devotion and appeasement, it might release a memory or two back to us.

As’toiel. All but one, three but none. Blessed be the mysteries that we seek to solve, and horrible be those that are held against us. May it guide us to seek what we cannot have, protect us from losing what we have plotted, and enlighten us with what we have lost.

It is to them that I pray. May the God see my worship, what mysteries I offer, and enlighten me. What questions do you ask such a being? Only the most dire. The most horrid.

As I sat in the morning, meditating, the first dream came to me. The woman spread her arms, and in a voice I could not understand, asked me - “What is it you seek?”

“My family,” I replied, “And the memory of what happened to them. The history of what may come, what may be, and how I might change it. I wish only to hold them again.”

She smiled - and disappeared. Hours passed. In the middle of the night, writing in my journal, I found myself pulled, once more, towards prayer. And it is to that prayer that I delved - from the shadows of my mind, the old man stepping forth. He did not smile, but sneered, looking me over as if I was but dirt on his boot.

“What is it you ask?”, he said, in a voice like that of a Doge talking down to a peasant.

“Why I am here, when they are not? What purpose does my life hold, if not to be with those that I loved? Where are they, and why can I remember this place - if only to suffer?”

There was a scoff, and as I looked towards the sound, he disappeared - fading into the night, leaving more questions than answers. It was their way. And, as I slept that night, another came to me.

The dream had been a pleasant one. Perhaps it was a memory, perhaps it was fabrication; me and Bryce, Aurelius, and Thaddius, out on a picnic near the bridge. The boys laughed and played in the river, waving their fishing poles like swords. My husband sat beside me on the stonework, his own rod dangling down to catch what he could - when his face disappeared. An endless void stares back at me as I watch, horrified, the mist engulf his body. Soon, my boys stopped playing - their faces gone, their forms dissolving.

As’toiel the Lost spoke, through their voices, as it stole their forms. “Where did their mother go?”

“I don’t understand,” I replied, pushing myself away. It was frightening, confusing. All of them spoke only in questions. All of them asked, but never answered. What answers could I glean, if it was only questions that they asked? Anger welled inside me, as I clenched my fist. “Answer me. Where are they? Where is my family?”

“Why did she disappear? What did she do?”, As’toiel the Lost replied, the mist dissolving from the vague shape of my family and turning into a different shape. For but a moment, I thought I saw a Rook staring down at me. I watched in mild horror. “And when will she return to the place that she left?”

Questions. It was only questions. There were no answers - but what did I expect, from a god of mysteries? Did I expect them to hand me what I wanted on a plate, with nothing asked? No. This was what they gave me. And before I could open my mouth, before I could ask again - I awoke.

So, I sit here. I write in my journal. I make sure my words are remembered, that my dreams are written - that their questions are here. Perhaps that is what they wanted me to ask myself. Perhaps this is what questions I should be looking to answers from. Perhaps it was simply fucking with me. I cannot tell.

But I will find them. No matter what anyone else says, I will find them.

[Talia]

Chapter 4:
Crumbling Walls
I spent a lot of time thinking, tonight. Meditating and staring at nothing until everything came crashing down. All the words and whispers from the people that surrounded me, from the god I worship, from the world I live in. And I can feel it crumbling. It began with a dream.

The walls were meant to protect us. I’d erected them myself, brick by brick, with hopes that it would keep everything - everyone - away. Thaddius helped, and later, Bryce and Aurelius lent their hand to building them. Eventually, we’d created our own little bubble. Our own safe space. I remember being so happy, so proud of them.

And as I stood in that safe space with them, I could feel the walls crumbling around me. The faceless one stood before me, in the bodies of my children, in the shape of my husband. The mist leaked through the walls, seeped through the floors, as the pounding and screaming outside picked up.

“Why did you forsake them?”, the Faceless One asked. And for once, I understood. I looked away from them, looked to the comfortable space we’d built. It was all we needed, as a family. It was all I needed.

“I thought it didn’t matter,” I answered, letting my arms hang at my sides. I could feel the will draining from me, as I remembered the feelings I’d felt. The stress. “I couldn’t have prevented it all. All we could do was look after our own. So I started to horde. To collect what I could, to turn away students, to reinforce the windows. We were going to move. To leave the store. To abandon the City. We just needed the right time.”

“In turning to yourself, did you not think it would do more harm?”

“You’re right,” I admitted, allowing myself to slide down the wall. The God stared down at me from the faces of those I’d lost. “And it did hurt. It hurt my relationship with Thaddius. It hurt how my sons viewed me. I took to being a selfish woman, trying to do everything I could to save them. To protect them from - from whatever it was that was happening. We built the walls, built our fortifications - and forsook the world.”

Tears burned in my eyes as I watched the images unfold before me. The world burning, ending, plague and monstrosities, horrors unspeakable wandering the streets. Turning away survivors at the door, arguing with Thaddius. Always arguing, towards the end. And then -

“Tell me, where did they go?”

“He… left me,” I whispered. My voice hurt. The words stung. “He took the children one night - and he left. Without even a word. I was - frantic. I searched everywhere for them, I screamed, I cursed his name. But I knew why he’d done it. I wasn’t his wife, anymore. I’d changed.”

It was a lance through my heart. There was no singular cause that had ripped them away from me. It was an avalanche, tumbling down the hill, which I had started. The God did nothing but watch me, perhaps with content, as I wept for the folly of my own creation. What had I done? Being so single-minded, so focused on nothing but myself and my family that I’d ripped them from my own arms?

They didn’t wait for me in the store. They didn’t wait for me when I had been alive. They were gone. This was the answer that I had sought, the questions that I had needed to answer. I would not find them in my bookstore, I would not find them in the City, I would not find them. They were gone.

They were gone.

“What will you do now?”, asked the God, as if sensing that I had begun to come to terms with it. I stared at them. I stared at my own hands. For a moment, I could sense the blood of everyone I had condemned by inaction, staining my very soul. What would I do, now? I couldn’t find them. I couldn’t - fix what I had broken. Could I?

They were dead.

Bryce, with his cockeyed grin, his tall form and dextrous ways. I could hear him whispering the words of Power as he cast his first Cantrip and set the cat on fire. Aurelius, his hands covered in mud, his clothing stiff with dirt from the messes he’d made playing in the streets and woods. Thaddius, slowly growing more and more quiet the longer the world wove on, the closer we came to oblivion.

The City is a dead place. I cannot imagine to find any sign of them, any sign of who I was, what I was, why I was. I could just end it. I could go jump into the Well, go back to not remembering any of this, and wandering the afterlife alone forever. I don’t deserve the mundane daydreams that I fancy myself with. I don’t deserve to have this happiness, not when it was me that drove them away. But I can’t. Too many questions remained.

What would Thaddius have wanted me to do? What would make Bryce smile? What would Aurelius find interesting?

They were gone. They were out of my reach, dead and disappeared, dust upon the wind.

“Thaddius was a good man,” I said, finally, after who knows how long of internal debate. “He’d have wanted me to overcome my flaws. To see past my selfishness and obsession with family. To - help the community around me.”

“Are you a hero?”, mocked the God.

“No. I am not a hero,” I replied, through forceful laughter and angry sobs. “I am a broken, tired, angry woman. A hag that forsook the world for a family that rightfully chose to protect themselves. It kills me - it kills me to know that I am the reason that they left. That they might have died.”

“Then how will you fix it?”

“By being what he would have wanted me to be. By living for them. I have joined the Reeves - originally, just to defend the Well. To further my own goals, to do what I had done before - to selfishly forsake everything but what benefitted me. But it’s not what he would have wanted, is it? - It’s not what he would have wished for me. And while I was not perfect - I was his.”

I pushed myself to my feet. “I will find them. I will bury them. And I will, in my new life, find a way for them to be proud of their mother once more.”

And it was with those words that the dream ended, with an almost satisfactory note in the tone of the God. It faded, like milk dumped into the lake, until I found myself sitting up in my bedroll.

It was a new dawn. A world I had not yet considered, stretched out before me, as I wept, and ignored the questioning calls of those around me. I found my eyes stung and my heart bled for a family that had rightfully forsaken me. But I knew that it was okay. That I could cry. That I could let my soul weep, my throat ache. It was the end, but also, the beginning.

I would fix myself. For them.

[Talia]

Chapter 5:
The Sound
I feel like I’ve returned to reality, now. It all came crashing down, and I had to get away - and now? Now I need to focus on what is real. What is known. I can’t linger on this anymore. I can’t linger on half-baked thoughts, half-wondered dreams. No matter how real they felt.

I can’t fix what happened. I can’t go back and change how it all came crashing down, how it all happened. But I know now, that that is no longer reality. This is. And I need to focus on this.

The town is still in the same state it was before my fugue state kicked in. I need to - well. Fix it. I’m a fucking Reeve, god damnit. I need to start acting like I’m a part of this and not just sit aside and weep for a headache. Let the dreams die. Let my sleep disappear. I have spells that can help me to rest without dreaming.

So.. Here we go. It’s me, it’s the world. We fix it, one step at a time. First step; food problem. I addressed it earlier, I thought, but I don’t think anyone listened. We need to start hunting. Reliably. We need to document what plants are edible and what aren’t, and start pulling them in in foraging. We need to start acting less like this is a temporary situation.

Yes, farming is difficult with a scar plopped in the middle of the fields, but damnit, we can clear more land. I’m going to talk to someone about that, and talk to the lumberjack about getting more wood. Housing is needed. We’ve got too many people cramped into too little space. How many people have just jumped back into the well because we’ve done nothing for so long?

It’s as much my fault as anyone else's. I’ve been lost in my own head, in my dreams, in trying to find a meaning when there isn’t one. I’m driving myself fucking insane. So. We focus elsewhere. We get shit done. If I repeat it enough, if I rant it into my fucking stupid brain, it’ll get done. Right?

Something in me is broken. I don’t know what. But I can’t let it keep holding me back. I can’t focus. I can’t think I see my children every moment, because how can I be sure they’re even real? No one else remembers this much. No one else remembers the details I can picture. I can’t talk about it anymore.

To HELL with the gods. My duty is to Risenholm. I need to start focusing on it. This. Is. My. Meaning.

Get it in your fucking head, Em.

This is it.

This is where we are. This is where you are. This is where we are. This is where you are. This is where they are. We fix it.

We fix it.

Fix. It.

Start with the food. Then we work on housing. Then we work further from there. Get other people involved. Start helping newcomers. Start talking to people again. Fix it. Fix yourself.

This is where we are.

This is home. Home.

FIX IT, Em.

FIX. IT.