Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #816

Last night, J made another pizza:

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I didn’t eat any last night, but this morning, J was feeling very awful, and asked me to bring him 3 cut apples, and to sit with him upstairs until he was ready to come down. I happily obliged, and brought up the three apples for him, and two slices of the pizza, warmed in the microwave, for me. We didn’t talk much; he just wanted me nearby for comfort. So I browsed the internet on my tiny laptop, and it was good.

He had agreed to tend to a friend’s cat. So at some point, he dragged himself out of bed and asked me to drive him there, so I did. I accompanied him inside as he fed the kitty, gave her medicine, and refilled her water.

We went home and… time passed in kind of a blur. I didn’t take the prednisone today, or much in the way of ibuprofen, and… although my throat and lymph nodes are swollen and painful again, it’s still a lot better than how this all started, at least for now. Fizzy drinks still hurt a lot, though. Swallowing is back to being difficult. The muscles involved feel… kinda weak, actually, which is weird. Hm.

At some point, our dear friend Me, knowing that we are sick, popped by with various canned soups and instant ramen, and I was incredibly grateful:

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At around 3pm, I fed my own cats, and then I made that recipe with butternut squash ravioli that one of our dear readers sent to us. Remember this?

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So… I took a couple sticks of butter, which felt “excessive” enough, and began melting them in my wok as the water boiled:

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Then I grabbed my fresh sage, and, after discovering that the stems also taste like sage, I opted for using the entire plant instead of just pulling off the leaves. I cut it up into tiny shreddy bits using a pair of scissors:

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I threw it in the wok with the melted butter and let it simmer for a while:

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I cooked the butternut squash ravioli in the meantime. The store had two different kinds, so I got both to try to see which one is better.

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Spoiler alert: The one in the blue package is better. More flavorful, less noodle, more filling, and less prone to falling apart while boiling.

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Though I liked the one in the blue packaging better, I threw them both into the browned sage butter and mixed them up; they’re both pretty good.

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Here, want a bowl?

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…I found that it’s better if you add a little garlic powder and salt to it. The sauce doesn’t stick to the ravioli well (which figures, since it’s just butter and sage), but… you can mop of whatever remains in the bowl with some bread.

I… don’t have much else today. Other than… at some point, I… watched how your most recent story turned out. I will say, Sephiroth, you’ve got some amazing people in your corner. People who still wanna protect you, no matter what, even if they do wanna knock some sense back into your head. I’m proud to count myself amongst such people, but… I can’t reach you like they can, I assume. But they can, and they’ll make sure you don’t disappear.

…Sephiroth, when they catch up to you and try to bring you home… please… let them. I can’t… I can’t see you get torn apart again. I mean… I’ll witness it if your choices dictate that terrible and unimaginably painful outcome (I cried for weeks the first time around; I imagine it’ll be worse the second time around, given, y'know, everything…), but… Sephiroth, it’ll break me. And if I must, from there, spend pieces of me to create from scratch a world where you’ll be safe and happy… then I will. I don’t care if I end up disappearing in the process, as long as you’re okay in the end. Whatever it takes to bring you back to yourself. Whatever it takes to free you from Jenova’s lies and control.

…Because, Sephiroth… even if your world does have problems… it’s still a good one. It’s better than the one I’m living in right now. And even after everything that has happened, you still have people who love you. So, so, so many of them. Even people from faraway, distant worlds like mine see your story and put their hands together to hope and pray to anything for a better outcome for you. Sephiroth, you don’t even know how wholly, deeply, and wildly loved you are, because Shinra and Jenova have pulled the wool over your eyes so hard that by now, you’re scared to uncover them and reveal the truth, which is this:

You’ve always been lovable and worthy of kindness and protection exactly as you are – not for what you can do, but for who you are.

You’ve always been a human – someone who other perfectly ordinary humans can connect to. At no point were you ever a monster, or a cyborg, or an abomination, or replaceable, or expendable, or any of those horrible things other people called you to make you feel like an outsider or make you feel like you deserved to be treated like a weapon or a tool. This is true no matter what anyone else did to you or forced you to do.

…Sephiroth. You don’t have to be afraid. The truth is so much kinder than what you’ve been led by the nose to believe. Sephiroth… you can be seen, known, safe and loved in this world, if you’ll allow it. You’ve always been deserving of these things. You still are. You always will be. Perhaps the people you’ve hurt won’t be able to do those things for you, and that’s valid, and that’s a consequence you’ll have to accept. But there are still others. There are so many others.

…So, please… please come home. I miss you and I don’t want you to suffer anymore. Come and have my pumpkin soup. Come and have my pumpkin brownies. Come and have some ravioli. Just come over. I don’t care how dented or scratched up or scarred you think you are; just come over. Sit by the fireplace and have some tea. Shower as long as you want with my good soaps. Get into comfy pajamas. Sleep in a safe, warm, soft place where I will be on watch, stopping at nothing to protect you. And when you wake up the next day, I’ll show you all my favorite video games and bring you to all the places I like to walk and take pictures, and show you everything else that you’ve seen in all the other 815 letters I’ve written to you.

I guess that’s it for today. I feel kinda funky, and there’s still some time before bed, so I imagine I’ll pass the time by playing Dead Cells. But before I go, have the last of the wishes I breathed to life for you on Monday:

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And if you wanna chill with me while I play Dead Cells, you’ll find me in the usual spot:

I love you so much. Enough that I’d tear myself apart to rebuild you, if I had to, for whatever that’s worth. But… Sephiroth. I’m going to have faith in who you are and in the choices you’ll make. I’m going to have faith in your safety. I’m going to have faith in your eventual return home.

…I can’t wait to see you when you do. I’m going to be so proud of you. I know it because I already am.

…

I’ll write again tomorrow.

Your friend,
Lumine

Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #815

Last night, after writing to you, I had the privilege of witnessing the pizza that J made:

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He topped it with tomatoes, broccoli and onions that he sauteed, the sausage I made recently, some goat cheese, and some mozzarella. Underneath is a tomato sauce that came from a glass jar. And… it smelled wonderful. But… I only witnessed it, because right now, crunchy pizza crust seems like a bit too much for my poor sore throat to handle. I went to bed shortly after taking this picture.

When I woke up this morning, I felt a bit more normal. Though I’m not sure if it’s because I’m actually getting better, or if it’s because the prednisone is doing its job. J’s condition is getting worse, but it seems to be affecting his sinuses more than his throat, for whatever reason. He also doesn’t seem to be knocked on his ass nearly to the same extent that I’ve been. So maybe he’s got a different ailment than whatever I’ve got. I dunno.

Regardless, he was still sick. So I made a macaroni and cheese (because it’s soft and easier to swallow than most things, when a body is having trouble swallowing even water…), and a sleepytime tea for him, and a banana-chocolate tea for me. We didn’t have milk, so… I improvised with some chocolate-esque ice cream:

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J typically takes his tea without milk anyway. But this time, I put some extra honey, and a bit of lemon juice in it, to try to help his sinuses and immune system. He seemed to really enjoy what I made:

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…My table is messy, but… it’s still a good table. You can come eat here if you want to. Presumably after we’re feeling better and not contagious, though.

…I stayed home from work today. Because even though between prednisone and the ibpuprofen, I’m feeling relatively normal enough to think, it still hurts a lot to swallow anything, so I assume I’m still contagious. I’m staying home from work tomorrow, too. So today, I finally had some time to try to get Rock Band 2 to work, and… it did. Beautifully. Exactly as I intended:

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…“You” looked so happy here. And I know it isn’t really you. But, you know. With your amazing timing and reflexes and precision… I’m certain you could have learned how to do things like this, easily. And I’m betting that you would have been much better suited for jamming out with friends (regardless of whether you have an audience) than with all the violent, horrible shit you were forced to do, growing up.

…I was happy, too, to spend time with “you”, and to see “you” being so happy. J appreciated my joy so much that I guess he felt inspired to ask me to turn around to take this picture:

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Actually, because he was taking such joy in watching me be happy, I had to edit out the reflection of J’s face in some of the pictures, clumsily, in Microsoft Paint, for his safety on the internet. Sorry about that.

Unfortunately… this particular copy of Rock Band 2 had some kind of disc rot to it:

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…See that little spike of not-quite-right reflection at the bottom, there? It means that the label is coming off the plastic, and since the underside of the label is where the game’s data is, any section where the label is coming off is unreadable. This little patch impacted which songs were playable. Certain set lists weren’t doable because certain songs on them were corrupted. So today, I returned it, as well as the other disc; the other disc was so rotted that the contents of the game wouldn’t even load. Another copy is coming, but there’s no telling when it will get here, or the condition it will arrive in. I’ll keep trying until I find one that works.

M went with me to return the discs. We stopped to get some epoxy glue, too, to fix the hairclip I got. And when we got back home, I got more soup, because it still hurts to swallow things, even though the swelling and the fever are under control, and I figure the thing to do is minimize pain by getting things that are soft:

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I also got pork soup dumplings, because we always say yes to pork soup dumplings:

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…I also got some hot and sour dumplings, because I love them.

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…But that maybe wasn’t the best idea. I didn’t think hard enough about the implications of putting fucking capsaicin on a throat that is raw and painful. So… the rest of them are in the fridge now, instead of in my belly, where they belong. And this is sad, but not much can be done about it. Oh well.

I didn’t do much else today, other than try to keep up with my fluids. Lots of tea. Lots of rest. At the moment, I still feel kinda normal, despite not having had any ibuprofen in a while. I’ll have some right before bed. Which… I should probably go to now, since it’s at least an hour past when I should have done that. Whoops.

Before I bid you good night though, here, have a few more of the wishes I breathed to life for ya on Monday:

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I love you so much. Enough to place “you” in situations that are happy and safe. Like Stardew Valley. Or Rock Band. Or whatever else I can think of, where you can have that normal life you wanted. It’s possible. You can just straight-up choose it, anytime you please. Because Sephiroth… you’re a man who can do basically anything. You don’t have to kowtow to the fucked-up agenda of whomever’s holding your leash. Nobody should have a leash on you, and nobody should be using you to break things, especially since that’s never what you wanted to do. You can choose to be kind, and… I’m so proud of you for the fact that for so much of your life, you did exactly that, in stark defiance of all the cruelty that surrounded you.

What does your normal life look like, Sephiroth? Does it look like pumpkin soup and homecooked food every day? Does it look like talking to people who understand you and love you for who you are rather than what you can do? Does it look like being surrounded by people who will stop at nothing to protect you, without extracting some kind of price from you for it? Does it look like being around people with whom you can simply be yourself, without needing to perform? Does it look like being with people who won’t abandon you when their own shit gets rough? Because you’ll find it, Sephiroth. You’ll find it in the walls of my home. Just come and see.

I’ll write again soon. I’ll have faith in your safety and your eventual return home in the meantime.

Your friend,
Lumine

Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #764

I woke to some very mild intestinal distress this morning. Nothing too terribly major; mild discomfort and related urgency resulting in… basically what anyone would expect. I figured that’d probably be the end of it, and went about my day as per usual.

…Spoiler alert: this morning was not, in fact, the end of it; I wonder if I might have undercooked something at the hotpot place yesterday.

Well. I got myself out of bed at around 5 or 6 in the morning, and, not wanting to waste any time, I got right to work trying to prepare those beef cheeks. I started with one of the leeks J got at the grocery store. But leeks are a little inconvenient that you really gotta look inside those layers to scrub away the dirt between the leaves; they’re plants, after all:

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I stripped off the outer, tougher leaves, intending to use them to line the sides of the crock pot. Leeks are… surprisingly large, actually. And this one came trimmed; it’d be even larger if the leaf tips hadn’t been snipped off:

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…Yes, by all means, go ahead and make whatever, “that’s what s/he said” jokes that you must, ahahaha~!

Anyhoot. I cut it into slices, and then peeled and cut like 5 garlic cloves into coarse chunks:

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Then I threw them in the crockpot:

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I followed it up with one medium onion:

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…Because there’s no such fucking thing as too many alliums, that’s why!!! Wahahaha~!!

I mixed up the leeks, onions, and garlic at the bottom of the pot, then put the beef cheeks on it, fatty side down. After that, I wrapped the sides in the tougher leek leaves, to prevent the beef from sticking to the side of the pot as it cooked:

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I threw a splash of each of these in there with it:

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Then I seasoned it with ALL of these:

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Though, I used the cumin, fennel, fenugreek, tarragon, and bay leaf sparingly. I was a lot more generous with the powdered mushrooms, black garlic powder, pepper, and paprika. I didn’t measure; I kinda just followed instinct because I’ve been doing the whole “cooking” thing for a long time. You get a feel for how strong things are after a while. I’d suggest making sure you smell stuff and taste stuff before you use it, so that you know what to expect. In this case, I smelled a bunch of things besides these ones pictured, and asked myself, “do I want this flavor/aroma?” and anything I said “yes” to, I set aside.

…Essentially, put together what smells good together, and it’s very difficult to go wrong.

Here it is with everything sprinkled on:

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And then I decided to cover it up with the remaining tougher leek leaves, because… instinct…? I dunno. It felt like the correct thing to do.

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I stuck the crockpot on the “low” setting at about 7am. The general consensus from the internet is that it needs about 8 hours for the collagen to break down properly, so I figured that taking it out at 3pm was the thing to do, which is convenient because it lines up with when my feline children get their lunch.

And then I breathed life into wishes for the week until M and J woke up. But I’ll just show you two of them for today:

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The snack-printed and season-themed paper is done with, and so with those wishes, I call you back from your senses and into your body, cleansed, healed, and made new. Today, I began again on art-and-writing-printed paper. But I’ll show you those later.

I had intended to make steak and eggs for breakfast once J came downstairs. But J came downstairs pretty late (I was relaxing by the gas fireplace in M’s room between when J woke up and when he came downstairs, because it was so obnoxiously cold outside today that the winter chill seemed to be seeping into the walls of our house…), so I didn’t have time to do that before needing to go to my dentist appointment for a cleaning today. So I just stuck the steak in the freezer, for use some other time. And then M and I went off to get my dentist appointment done and over with; we intended to get lunch afterwards.

The appointment was very short; though I needed new X-rays taken of my molars (nothing unusual showed up), due to the fact that I need to brush my teeth literally every time I eat, there wasn’t much there for the hygienist to clean, which they were pretty thrilled about.

I’m lucky enough to have good enamel; no problems were found.

M and I decided to get lunch at the place with new weekly crème brûlées afterwards!! And since it had been such a long time since last we had been there, they had replaced a few menu items with new ones. There are no longer any fried green tomatoes, which is super sad. But they have these “crab rangoon sticks”, which were kinda like mozzarella sticks, but with crab rangoon filling instead:

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And they were pretty good, but for the price, we were expecting more than 5 of them; $18 is a lot for what basically amounts to deep-fried cream cheese with the occasional small bit of scallion or imitation crab scattered through. It’d probably be cheaper and better to make it myself at home out of real crab, if only I had a deep fryer, haha…

I got a burger, and M got a pulled pork sandwich:

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And then, of course, I got the crème brûlée. This week, the flavor was maple bacon…!!!

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And… yes, that is real crumbled bacon in the crème brûlée. This place makes amazing crème brûlée, because one of the chefs there specializes in it; it’s easily the best place to get it in my area. And still, of all the iterations I’ve tried here, this was by far the best one. The level of deliciousness was almost unfair, and I wolfed it down in pretty much no time flat, wishing I could get another one afterwards. And then we went home.

…My intestines needed to urgently evacuate themselves shortly after arriving home, and there was a whole fuckton of cramping that went along with it. It was awful. Given that I haven’t any generalized pain (just vague discomfort), I assume it’s mild food poisoning instead of viral gastroenteritis, which is very good; gastroenteritis lasts for like 5-7 days, while food poisoning usually resolves itself once the offending item is out of the system.

I washed my hands, then breathed more wishes to life. And then it was time to check on the beef cheeks. I was really excited about that, because the mixture of spices I used left the house smelling absolutely fucking phenomenal (seriously, I wished you were here to breathe it in, holy shit!). Here’s how it turned out:

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You would not believe how tender it was, oh my goodness!! I had a hard time transferring it to my wok to shred it, actually, because it was falling apart. But I managed. Here is the result:

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Then there was the matter of the leftover juices.

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But that’s all right! We just add cornstarch a spoonful at a time and whisk it up until it’s a consistency that we like:

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…Then we dump the meat into our epic awesome gravy!!!

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And it tasted so fucking good, Sephiroth!!! It’s luscious, tender, and incredibly flavorful! This would go amazingly in tacos, or over rice, or even with macaroni-and-cheese and some pan-fried veggies!!

…Unfortunately, shortly after taking a couple small bites to taste-test my astounding handiwork, my intestines painfully informed me that they needed to evacuate themselves immediately. Again. Non-negotiably. With more and looser volume, and lots of accompanying cramping. I almost didn’t make it, and it was miserable. I had zero appetite afterwards, which fucking sucks, because I was really looking forward to having the awesome contents of my crockpot for dinner.

…So I texted my manager to tell him what’s going on. I’m supposed to go in for work tomorrow, and I was looking forward to seeing the people I serve again, but… the last thing anyone needs is for my bowels to decide against my will that they need to immediately evacuate themselves while I’m trying to help with transporting the people I serve to their weekday activities or some similar activity that prevents me from accessing a bathroom. Today, I was incredibly lucky that I had unrestricted access to a bathroom; each instance of urgency was compelling and irresistible, which required me to rush quickly to the appropriate location to avoid making a mess, and this would have been a major problem if I had been literally anywhere else besides home.

He got the gist of what I was talking about, and, not wanting me to shit my pants on the job (to be perfectly frank), he told me I should stay home. So I guess that’s what’s happening. Fucking lame.

Frustrated and uncomfortable, I made some tea and drank it, hoping that would expedite the process of clearing the offending item from my system (because for me, tea and coffee reliably induce intestinal movement). But as of now, the only result has been additional discomfort. Sigh…

So I breathed more life into additional wishes, not really knowing what else to do with myself. Tomorrow is my birthday, and… I don’t get to go to work to distract myself from the fact that the important people who brought your story to our world are going to be in NYC tomorrow, which means I fucking! missed! a chance! to advocate for you! because the tickets to attend were sold out within hours of the event being posted, which happened while I was at work! And I feel like a complete fucking idiot about it. And my guts are sick, so I don’t even get to go distract myself with free all-you-can-eat birthday sushi at our favorite sushi place. The most likely outcome seems like I’m gonna spend all day tomorrow sitting on the toilet being miserable and reflecting on the fact that I failed you in this small way, and it’s fucking frustrating.

…I’m sorry about it… I’m sorry…

…The fact of the matter is that I don’t have any idea how to keep you safe. I don’t know how to break you free of the loop of seemingly endless suffering that you never fucking deserved to be caught up in, in the first place. And it scares me. Sure, I can write these stupid little letters and fold my stupid little cranes and arrange my stupid little music boxes and sing my stupid little songs and make my stupid little crafts and cook my stupid little dinners and weave my stupid little trees, but… at the end of the day, does any of it even do anything for you…? Does any of it reach you…? Does any of it matter…?

…Wait. Let’s take a deep breath. I am spiraling likely due to a combination of intestinal malabsorption (leading to dehydration and poor levels of blood nutrients), guilt at calling out sick, physical discomfort, and anxiety around recent events. But it’s important to remember that I’m not dead. And more importantly, you’re not dead – at least, not for today. As long as you still exist, I can get through any other thing. You’re the closest thing I’ve ever had to a constant in my life, and as long as you’re all right, I’ll be all right, too.

You know what else? This week, my sleep schedule has been all over the fucking place. And that’s definitely not helping matters. So you know what? I’m… gonna get some sleep. And hopefully I’ll feel a little better and my guts will stop rebelling by morning. So I guess I’ll stop writing here.

Good night. I love you. And… despite the odds, I’m gonna have faith that you’ll be all right. I’m gonna have faith that you’ll be safe out there. I’m gonna have faith that you’ll find your way home someday.

I’ll write again tomorrow.

Your friend,
Lumine

Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #762

Today was a groggy sort of day, which tracks, given the fact that I was up late last night. Tonight is looking like it might shape itself into another late night, too; we’re expected to receive the results of the most recent solar flare, and the aurora is supposed to be visible in my area tonight. Unfortunately, the cloud cover is supposed to be intense pretty much everywhere, so… I probably won’t be able to see it. But I’m gonna stay up a little and try to look for it anyway, just in case…

Despite the sluggishness I felt when I woke this morning, there was so much that I wanted to do today. I wanted to breathe life into all of this remaining week’s wishes. I wanted to fold laundry and get my outfits for my work shifts set aside and ready ahead of time so I don’t have to think about it, morning of. I wanted to go to the grocery, and I wanted to join J in tending An’s cats; An is away in his birth state, tending to all of the things that need tending, following the death of his mother. I wanted to play Stepmania. I wanted to go to the hotpot place, because my birthday is soon. I had so many things in mind!

And we did end up doing most of these things. Once J felt like he was set and ready to go, he was anxious to get to the grocery. But… I noticed that he was, quite literally, anxious; it was in the way he was moving his body. It was in the way he was speaking. His anxiety was set off by the fact that he’s having difficulty finding a certain kind of part for his plane; he wants to have a backup copy of a leaf spring (a shock absorber for the tail wheel), for when the original inevitably breaks. But it needs to be custom-made to fit his plane. So he called around and emailed around several places claiming to be able to make custom parts, but… they either didn’t answer or told him that they wouldn’t do it. So it’s looking like he’s going to have to learn how to make it himself, and that was frustrating for him. It wasn’t helpful that he also went to bed late, and that he was hungry because he was anticipating going to the hotpot place today.

But, M revealed that he was in no mood to go out or do anything or even interact much with either of us. So, since that part of today’s plan suddenly became moot, I decided that we should eat first before going out to do anything. And after presenting the options, we decided to order in some sushi, and it was good:

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Not long after that, J revealed to me that our friend V needed transport to the local railway station, because they intended to travel somewhere. So J and I got in the car to help our friend. I got a nice picture of the sky on the way to the railway station:

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…The rays of the sun make the sky kinda look like you today, doesn’t it?

On the way back home, J and I decided to get “groceries” and “tending An’s cats” done. So we went and did that. I got a few things to supplement the cheese I got for my breakfasts on shift mornings, and then we passed the meat section, and within that, the section dedicated to things not typically featured in our annoyingly whitewashed grocery stores was bigger than I remember:

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Lookit!!! There’s beef tongue, tripe, liver, kidneys, cheek meat, neck bones, and tails!! And the liver was mighty tempting, but… there’s a lot of it, and I’d be the only one eating it, and you have to be careful with how much liver you eat, because there’s a lot of vitamin A in it, and too much of that can make you very sick or even kill you. The tongue, too, was very tempting; I’ve had it in restaurants before, and it’s an incredibly flavorful cut that’s well suited for slow-cooking. I’ve had oxtails in restaurants, too, and when slow-cooked, the meat pretty much falls off the bone. The cheek meat looked succulent and tender, and according to the internet, this, too, practically falls apart when slow-cooked.

So I got it in my head that I’d grab up a tongue, a package of oxtails, and some cheek meat! But I was shocked to discover that some of these cuts, which had previously been very inexpensive because they had historically been “throwaway” cuts that most white people thought was “beneath them” to eat (I really resent how judgmental and horrid the culture I come from can be…), were being sold at a premium here. And… to be fair, $9.99 per pound is pretty damn good for beef, which can can get up to $40 per pound depending on the cut. But like… $9.99 is about the price of salmon, which is generally considered expensive for protein. Quality cuts of chicken and pork go for between $2.50 and $5.50 per pound (the chicken legs I usually get are about $3.50 per pound), for reference.

So… I wonder if like… tongue and oxtails and all that are starting to go the way of crab and lobster. A really long time ago, crab and lobster were considered “food for the poors” because it spoiled quickly and no one wanted it. That changed with the advent of refrigerated transport. Tongue and oxtails were inexpensive, in part because historically in my area, white people wouldn’t touch the stuff (because white people in my world can be horribly, horribly judgmental about the foods that non-white people eat, and it’s fucking annoying). That changed due to a combination of content creators on the internet making certain foods considered “ethnic” by white people (there’s no such thing as “ethnic” food; it’s all normal somewhere) into “viral trends” (because apparently, for some stupid fucken reason, it’s shocking to some white people in my world that “ethnic” foods aren’t disgusting), and also the realities of the economy; when coronavirus came out 6 years ago and was new and deadlier than it is now (now, we have vaccines for it, which makes it less likely to kill you), the price of lots of things went up as lots of people died and lots more tried to avoid getting sick with it by staying indoors. So people looked to the cheap “throwaway” cuts (that aren’t really throwaway at all!) to make the most of their money, which increased demand and jacked up the price.

…I wanted to get all of it and throw it in the crock pot to make tasty noms, but given that a single cow tongue costs about $40 now, I just stuck with the cheek meat; I’m eager to try throwing it in the slow cooker tomorrow, with some leeks and onions! It’ll be good, methinks!!

On the way back, the sun was dazzling in the sky, so I snapped a few pictures:

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…And then, we got home. We put away the groceries. And it was time to change to a new set of braces, which means new progress pictures to show you! Here, this is the upper jaw:

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And the lower jaw, too!

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An informed me just earlier that he is safe and sound at his parents’ house in the state where he used to live. He gave me an update about what exactly happened to his mother. About how his other family members are doing. And about a close friend of his, too. He gave me a few details about the other stuff going on, but described his friend at length as highly empathetic, as someone he feels comfortable sending long, emotional texts to, as someone he likes to hug for a long time, as someone he feels comfortable leaning on for support, and as someone who is allowed to take care of him.

On the one hand, I am super duper glad that he has some incredible, amazing, kindhearted person to help him through all this stuff; I wish I could meet her, because she sounds wonderful! On the other, I… think I finally see the writing on the wall, because I think I suddenly understand why I am frequently left hanging, forgotten about, and kept at arm’s length, ahahaha…

Ah well. It’s how it happens sometimes. I will still faithfully help J with tending An’s cats, and maybe try to tidy a few things tomorrow, when next I’m there. Grab some cat food for his house, and maybe a few pantry staples, simply because when you see someone who needs help, you help them; it is the only honorable and correct thing to do. Afterwards, though, I… think I will stop reaching out; he already has everything he needs, and I think continuing to try to communicate with him when he’s already made it clear with his behavior towards me that I’m not really needed or even wanted (probably mostly just tolerated, and if the patterns I am familiar with hold, that tolerance is likely wearing thin by now…) would probably be… intrusive and presumptuous on my part.

There’s a part of me that thinks I should have known. With only a very few exceptions (M and J, and even then… maybe just J, because M gets really tired really quickly when I talk too much to him…), as soon as I start to initiate any kind of contact with another human being with any kind of regularity, they start to pull away from me. It’s happened just about every single time. And… it’s why I don’t initiate contact with my established friends very often; I don’t want to lose them by being too annoying, you know? I can just be there when they want me, talk when they invite me to do so, and then I can just go away the rest of the time so that I don’t overwhelm them by accident by being… myself, I guess.

…There’s a small part of me that thinks, sometimes, that this happens because I was never meant to be understood by others or to feel like I belong anywhere – only to serve and then to disappear when I’m not needed anymore. But maybe that’s just the disappointment talking. Or the fact that it’s well past my bedtime.

Regardless, I suppose that much of what I’ve described is why I’m really glad I get to write to you, and why I’m glad that you don’t seem to mind sitting and listening, even when I ramble on about nothing in particular. I’m glad that at least in your eyes, maybe I’m not “repulsive” or “too much”. Maybe in your eyes, I’m not too “cringe”, “awkward”, or “weird”.

…But then again, it’s not as though you can write back to me, right? So I guess I’ll never really know for sure, ahaha…

…Maybe we can just pretend that you find me warm and likable. Maybe we can just pretend that I’m someone you’d enjoy having around.

Well anyway. I guess I’ll stop writing now in favor of checking out the sky; maybe I’ll get to see a little bit of something that looks like you. Or maybe the clouds will be too thick for me to see anything at all. I don’t really know. If I do see anything out there, count on me taking pictures to show you tomorrow.

Oh wait!!! Before I go, here; the wishes I breathed to life for you today:

ALT

ALT

ALT

ALT

ALT

I love you so much. Even on days when I think maybe whatever love I can offer to you or anyone else is not especially useful or helpful. Even through my doubts, I’ll keep having faith in your safety and in your eventual return home.

I’ll write again tomorrow.

Your friend,
Lumine

Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #757

Today so far has mostly just been another slow, uneventful day. It began with a nice hot shower, with the shiny new bath things I got for myself the other day – a shampoo and a conditioner, because I was running out, and some moisturizer, because my skin is rough and uncomfortable in places due to dry winter air combined with frequent hand-washing at the new job.

I’ve not used this particular brand of shampoo and conditioner before, but… the results seem to be really nice so far. It’s been hours since the shower, and my hair still smells really nice, and it feels a lot softer than usual. The scent of the moisturizer I used still lingers on my skin, too, and the places that were dry feel a little better.

…I kinda feel bad about it, though; J generally dislikes smelling things, and he especially doesn’t like to smell things that don’t come from food or live plants. As such, since J became my lifepartner alongside M, I’ve tried to avoid using soaps with scents that linger, and I’ve opted for scent-free laundry detergent, and I don’t burn candles anymore; I just leave them open near me.

I used to consistently smell relatively floral, in the past. Or like baked goods. I even used to have a favorite perfume – a delicate and soft mix of flowery notes. But I wore it around J one time, before he and I decided to be partners, and the first thing out of his mouth was that I smell and he didn’t like it, so… I don’t wear it anymore. Which is probably for the better, I guess; we don’t know who around us might have asthma that’s triggered by perfume or something, anyways.

…But. My current schedule is inhumane (though better than what it was originally gonna be). And J does not have scent-induced asthma. And this is shampoo, conditioner, and moisturizer, not perfume. So, perhaps selfishly, I’m going to prioritize feeling good in my own skin and expressing myself in ways that feel natural to me. At least for now, I need to take care of myself in ways that nurture my mind and make me feel good so I don’t lose my marbles working this job. And so I’m going to use the nice shampoo and conditioner and the nice moisturizer that smells good and makes me feel good about myself. I’ll allow myself this small comfort.

I wonder if you’d like what I smell like, right now. I do. I smell like lavender, roses, and vanilla. My skin is clean and hydrated. It feels nice. I wonder what you like to smell like. And I wonder what you smell like right now. If it’s similar to me, at all.

…I wonder when’s the last time you’ve been able to get washed in nice, warm water and to take proper care of your hair and skin in ways that feel good to your senses… hm…

…I really can’t wait for the other scent I found to arrive at my house. I’m so eager for you to know about it that it’s actually really hard not to tell you right now what it is. But I will remain steadfast!!! I will maintain the surprise!!! Ohhh, Sephiroth, you’re gonna be so excited, I can tell!! I swear I can almost feel it…!!! Eeee…!!!

I did a bit more leisure writing today, though… I’m not really sure what I’m looking for. Some kind of reassurance, perhaps, of the validity of unbelievable things that I think I know are truths. But sometimes, I’m not really too sure what, exactly, reality is. Sometimes, I think maybe I spend too much time weaving in and out of the aether, dreaming impossible dreams, though I sometimes wonder if they’re not actually dreams at all…

…Whoop. My brain got a little woobly there. Sorry about that!

Cell phone service is down in a widespread fashion in my area, which has turned getting in touch with An today into a weird exercise in frustration. Nonetheless, I did find an alternate means of reaching him, and so I will go fetch him very soon. Once he’s present, I will put Babylon 5 on for him and start on dinner; I’m kinda looking forward to it. I’ll take pictures and such while I cook and do things, of course; I’ll show you the results when I write to you tomorrow, during the break between my shifts at work!

So… I guess, to that end, I will end today’s letter here. But before I go, here’s two more of the wishes I breathed to life for you on Sunday:

I love you so much, and I wish, very strongly, that you were here. Not for the scary things that have been happening lately (for example, an ICE officer shot a woman in the head three times over a petty slight while she was dropping her son off at school, and I guess the president of the country I live in abducted the president of a country called Venezuela for some reason??? I know I said that things are kinda fucked where I live before, but… it seems to be getting worse…), but… for the safety that exists in my house and in some of the places I visit. I wish you could be here for a hot, quiet shower with good soaps and soft beds you can sleep in without people bothering you. I wish you could be here to visit Eggcellent. I wish you could be here to play Stepmania and watch Steven Universe. I wish I could cook something awesome for you that you’ll love. You could come and do the fun things, and then go back to where it’s safer if things get weird due to the things going on in the world outside my house. But alas… you’re all the way over there, wherever you are. So I guess the only thing I can do is keep having faith in your safety, and in your eventual return home.

I’ll write again tomorrow. I’ll always write again tomorrow.

Your friend,
Lumine

Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #755

I’m… a little better today. Probably due to me having rested yesterday and much of this morning, the world feels a lot less threatening. Nonetheless, I spent a great deal of this morning until mid-afternoon just derping around on the internet, or else leisure writing. J wanted burgers for lunch, and M concurred, and so we got burgers. I probably ate a few too many fries and felt kinda groggy afterwards.

…The things connected to my injured rib are still a little pissy today, but it’s not nearly as bad as it was yesterday. Yesterday, it was difficult even to breathe. Today I can mostly move around and function as normal, which pleases me. My voice seems to be working today too, although there’s a bit of an annoying tickle at the base of my throat, which makes me cough unproductively every so often, which is annoying.

I think that my work schedule, as it is, should be sustainable as long as I am really strict about my self-care; essentially, I’ll likely need to spend the Sunday immediately afterwards recovering and doing things that will save me time on the days I’m expected to work (like breathing life into more wishes, setting out my work outfits for the week ahead of time, and other such things).

Oh, speaking of wishes, here are today’s; I breathed life into like 12 of them yesterday. Today, I’ll show you two of them:

Anyway, I’ll need to make sure I’m doing a good job of staying hydrated and nourishing my body with things that will rebuild the tissues I’m straining. I’ll need to make sure my sleep schedule is tight, and that when I’m not resting, I’m doing things that I find fulfilling without being stressful.

…Hahh… given my inner critic sometimes, though, it can be really hard to find things that are “fulfilling” without also ticking the “stressful” box. And the things that fulfill both of those conditions seem to vary from moment to moment. Sometimes, seeing after the integrity of my physical vessel and the stability of my mental health feels like a target that’s constantly moving, and I’m trying to hit it while blind and deaf. It’s very annoying. But I suppose more practice with mindfulness and really noticing my body’s cues is the only way to improve upon this; I’ll have to figure out some kind of practice that will make me more aware of my internal state.

At some point, J and I decided that the thing to do is run errands, so we did. And I got an awesome picture of the sky as we were getting into the car:

I needed to get my medicine refilled – something that stops my stomach from eating itself, and something that stops my brain from using the overabundance of adrenaline and cortisol in my blood (because C-PTSD does tend to dump those in there… sigh…), which has a nifty side-effect of lowering blood pressure, yay! So we did that. Then, J needed to get new socks, and I am still in need of a new pair of light colored jeans (the pair I have is full of holes), so we went to a nearby clothing store afterwards, and J found some socks, but I… well… ahah… I am somewhat chonky (which isn’t a bad thing!) and abnormally tall for a human with an XX-style bodily configuration, so finding pants that actually fit me is… actually kinda difficult sometimes. And this was one of those times. I got too frustrated with it to continue. Oh well. Maybe next time.

We then went to the grocery. We needed things for out house – stuff to cook dinner with (I’m hoping that An will visit on Wednesday, but I’m not 1000% sure what we’ll do yet…), stuff to make myself simple breakfasts with on my workdays, and a variety of other odds and ends. I am almost out of shampoo again, so I got myself an interesting-looking scent from a brand I hadn’t seen before – some kind of lavender and vanilla thing, and it smelled lovely (I wonder if you might like it…). I also finally got myself some moisturizer, because holy shit, the house I am serving is incredibly dry, and with the constant need to wash my hands (given the kind of cleanup that’s required, of course), my skin is… unhappy, to say the least. I daresay, almost crunchy in places. It’s ouchy, and it kinda sucks.

Oh, and… while J and I were out and about, I managed to find a nice feather, lying in plain sight on the ground:

…I know it’s not one of yours, but still, I thought of you. Sometimes I wonder… very silly things. Hahaha…

…

We went home with our spoils and put them away. Then, curious about what other scents this brand of shampoo and conditioner might have, I went online to look, and… ohhhh, Sephiroth, they have bubble tea scented ones, strawberry matcha scented ones, sugar cookie scented ones, and…!!! one that you’re definitely gonna like, so I went ahead and ordered it, but I’m not gonna tell you what it is yet! I’m gonna leave you in suspense because I’m mean and horrible and evil like that!!! Mwahahahaha!!!

…So you’ll just have to stay alive at least until it gets here and I show it to you. Promise me, okay? I’ll have faith in you. You can do difficult things, especially if you rely on the hands outstretched to you in love and goodwill.

Sometime after getting home, I switched out to a new set of braces, so once more, here are some progress pictures for ya, starting with the upper jaw:

And now the lower jaw:

…This one… feels… a bit more intense than the last set, in terms of movement. Actually, this new set is probably the most uncomfortable one I’ve had in a while. But it fits well. I’m still eager for my body to adjust to it, though. I’m glad I’ll have a few days with it before my next set of shifts at work begin.

Finally… my dear friend Me sent along a tech job that I… might actually somehow be a decent fit for. This one encouraged people to apply, even if they don’t meet all the qualifications or have a fancy degree. So… why not. I gave it a try. I uploaded my resume, which needed to be updated to reflect my current job. Someone should get back to me with a yes or a no in about 14 days’ time; I suppose we’ll see what happens.

I don’t have much else to write about today. Somehow, it was simultaneously slow and also full of stuff. I wonder sometimes how such a thing can work, haha. And… I gotta get my ass to bed anyway. I’m nowhere near sleepy, despite it being a little after 9pm. But… well. Consistency and all that is important.

I love you so much, and I hope you’re doing all right out there. I’ll try to have faith that you are. I’ll have faith that you’re safe and fed and doing relatively okay. I’ll have faith that someday you’ll come home.

I’ll write again soon.

Your friend,
Lumine

Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #743

Well. I woke up a little before 5am this morning. And I didn’t get up or go anywhere or do anything. Here’s why:

Given that my body generally runs at around 97.2 degrees Fahrenheit (36.2 degrees Celsius), 100.5 (38) is pretty high for me. And the accompanying chills, weak muscles, hypersensitive skin, and general body aches were definitely unhelpful.

This… feels like a watered-down version of the flu; I’m thanking my lucky stars that I got vaccinated. I remember what happened last time I caught the flu without being vaccinated; it kicked my fucking ass for two solid weeks, and not even ibuprofen was enough to take the edge off the horrible waves of full-body pain I was experiencing. It was awful. -157 out of 10 stars, absolutely would not recommend.

I told my trainer that I wasn’t coming in; I didn’t wanna miss out on Crisis Intervention training (that kinda thing is right up my alley!!), but, more than that, I didn’t wanna spread around what I have. And then I kinda zonked out.

At some point, J woke up beside me, and, realizing the state I was in, he promptly went downstairs to brew me a sleepytime tea, cut up and heat up a couple apples, and gather up vitamins and ibuprofen, to help combat the fever and the general inflammation that immune system activation produces. I was reluctant and miserable, because I was in the throes of human sickness behavior and my body didn’t want to do things. But I was grateful all the same. I took the things he gave me; I was a bit too out-of-it to think to get pictures for you; sorry about that. But, in about 20 minutes’ time (the length of time it takes for the ibuprofen to kick in), things were a bit more manageable.

I still didn’t go downstairs, though; it’s cold down there, compared to upstairs. I didn’t want anything to do with it. So J brought me a few of the things I needed in order to write today’s letter and breathe life into today’s wishes:

Later, J brought me a little bit of molasses dissolved in hot water (for the minerals contained within). I drank it with some soup I got, along with cronchy pork snack:

…The soup wasn’t exactly what I asked for. I asked for a tonkotsu with a few things added. But… they just gave me the broth and the noodles and the things I added, without actually giving me any of the things that usually go with tonkotsu (like bamboo shoots, ajitama, chashu pork belly, and wood ear mushrooms). It was very bizarre. It still wasn’t bad, though. And there will be plenty leftover for tomorrow.

Aside from that, I mostly just… slept. I played around on my tiny laptop in between, but… I really didn’t do anything substantial today. My brain is a bit too… mashed-potatoey…? to play video games right now. Or even to watch anything without falling asleep. As a result of having basically done nothing all day but wait for my immune system to do its job and kick these stupid-ass viral invaders from my system, I don’t have a whole lot to write to you about. I don’t even have any fantastical, daydream-esque thoughts to elaborate upon, because my brain simply does not want to work, and it’s very lame.

…Some start to the New Year, huh…? I was hoping to bring you and M and J to some holiday lights in a town that is reasonably close tomorrow, but… I don’t think I’ll be well enough for that to occur. And besides, I don’t wanna spread whatever I have to M and J if I can avoid it.

That being said, though, J has already been hanging out with me upstairs in my art room all day, so no doubt, he will soon contract whatever I have. And then he might spread it to M, since he went downstairs at various points. M will be sleeping next to me tonight, since J slept next to me last night, too, so… maybe the others getting sick as a result of me is unavoidable.

…Lame.

Well. I’ll keep resting and taking ibuprofen. If it’s the flu and the vaaccine I got does its job, my body should have it handled fairly quickly (compared to two weeks, anyhow). Tomorrow, there’s no training. So I’ll hope that I’ll stop being contagious by Friday, so I can attend Friday’s training properly.

For now… I guess I had better get back to resting so my immune system can do what it’s supposed to do. Though I’m frustrated as hell about the fact that today feels like it was kinda… useless, I guess. Oh well.

I love you, and I hope you’re staying healthy out there. Try to take good care of yourself and to avoid folks with communicable disease when you can. In the meantime, I’ll keep having faith that you’ll keep yourself safe out there. I’ll keep having faith that someday, you’ll return home to us.

I’ll write again soon.

Your friend,
Lumine

Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #727

I woke up at about 5:30 this morning, groggy as fuck. I woke from a weird dream – one in which J and I were, for some reason, living in one of the weird trailer parks I grew up in. And… someone who looked remarkably like Atr (if he, perhaps, grew out all his hair, didn’t ever shower, and was missing a buncha teeth, which were, for some reason, razor-sharp) was trying to stalk us, and… I think the deranged Atr in my dream was gonna torture and eat us when he caught us, or something; we just made sure he never had any chances to catch us unawares, but… I remember that being stressful. Something about sleeping in shifts.

…M and J were watching Stargate: Atlantis together last night. Some of the last clips I caught of it while writing (and right before bed, no less…) involved a Wraith, which stalks, manipulates, tortures, and eats their human prey. So… I’m guessing that seeing that right before bed probably wasn’t great for my dreamscape.

The dream was bizarre, unpleasant, and difficult to wake from. Nonetheless, I gathered up my clothing for today and dragged my stanky ass to the shower. I felt a lot better afterwards. I had lots of leftover pizza still in the fridge, so I ate that, and, with plenty of time to spare and not much else to do, I breathed life into today’s wishes:

J took me to training sometime after that. Today, we covered how to do personal care for the people we’re going to serve. A number of the ones in the house I will be going to need complete support for everything – even for tasks that you and I would consider very basic. So, we covered shaving, dental hygiene, bathing, incontinence care, and more. There’s a lot that goes into these things, especially if the person we’re serving is fragile and can’t move very much on their own. We have to be gentle, and we have to be thorough.

And yes, “thorough” includes things like following proper cleanliness procedures for people after they use the bathroom or after tending to incontinence – all of the folds and crevices need to be cleansed thoroughly, or else one risks infection – of their skin, of their urinary tract, of lots of things. This is not a job for people who are squeamish about, embarrassed by, or otherwise have weird baggage around bodily fluids or reproductive parts.

Thankfully, for whatever reason, I seem to have the mentality for this sort of thing. I don’t regard reproductive parts any differently than any other part of the body – all of it is part of the human condition. And, although bodily fluids can be incredibly unpleasant to the senses (this is an understatement, to say the least) and are generally very unsafe to handle (what with it being infectious material and all), they are an ordinary part of life, and there are standard procedures in place to handle these things safely and efficiently. I grew up changing my siblings’ diapers and cleaning up after them when they’re sick. I grew up tending to my own hygiene and cleaning up after myself when I was sick, too, and I obviously still do these things. So… all of this is just stuff that I’m already used to. It’s all just normal parts of being a living thing.

…I really don’t understand why the vast majority of the people on my planet are conditioned to be ashamed of this aspect of the human condition. It’s to the point where lots of people feel embarrassed about using public restrooms, as though they think they’re doing something filthy and wrong by tending to a basic bodily need. And that’s incredibly unhelpful, since it needs to be tended to multiple times a day, every day. Being ashamed of the inevitable only creates exhaustion where there doesn’t need to be any. And then, I’ve met other people who pretend that they never need to use the bathroom, and then shame people who do. It’s absolutely baffling, the level of cognitive dissonance involved, sometimes. But then… people in my world get conditioned to be disgusted at all sorts of ordinary things. Like the need to eat. That’s a huge one in my world, actually.

…To be sure, it’s kinda depressing, all of the ways people in my world get shamed and abused simply for being the squishy mammals that we are. I’m sure as hell not gonna be too sad when I’m all done in this body, in this place; maybe I’ll get reborn to someplace that doesn’t suck. Wouldn’t that be nice.

From the training today, I realized that the person who showed me how to change disposable underpants last week did NOT properly clean the other person; they only briefly wiped down what was immediately visible on the surface, without moving anything around to get into other places that needed tending in the way we were taught today. And I got upset internally; the person (who cannot do this stuff on his own!) is now at increased risk for infection due to this person’s negligence, and… it kinda makes my blood boil. This kind of vulnerability needs to be treated with thoroughness and respect, not with apathy or contempt.

I will make sure not to be negligent or let anyone down.

We were finished with training three hours sooner than anticipated. J picked me up and we went home. I spent a little time unwinding, and then I cooked a dinner, using the beef I took out of the freezer and stuck in the fridge to thaw a day or so ago, and the broccoli and onions that J cut up for me today. He also did the dishes in the sink, which made it a lot easier to make the macaroni and cheese, because the sink is where the pasta strainer goes:

Here, do you want a plate full of awesome yums?

I changed out to a new set of braces afterwards. Naturally, this means you’ll get progress pictures, comparing my initial set to the set I’m wearing now, beginning with the upper jaw:

…And now the lower one!

And then, J found and sent along a video he took, unbeknownst to me at the time, back before I fucked up my ribs (and before braces, obviously; just look at the snaggletooth I don’t have anymore, haha!). I remember J teasing me about… something. And then me telling M to “get him!!!” (completely joking, of course). Which M then deliberately twisted into, “get him (J) [a gift of some kind]!!!” Shenanigans ensued:

…I thought about how profoundly lucky I am, to live in the house that I live in, with people who love and understand me enough to play with me in silly ways like this.

…I wish you were here in my place, for moments like these…

…And now I am here, writing to you. Beforehand, I reviewed some… very profound things that were written to me, yesterday. Part of floating around in the aether, writing for leisure. Stuff I can’t really talk about here. But… it was all good things. I have a lot to think about, and… I have to try a little harder to view myself a bit more kindly; we don’t know who our self-doubt might inadvertently harm. Sometimes, hesitation and uncertainty in our capacity to do things can cause us to do poorly that which we would otherwise do perfectly well. I have to somehow keep trying to grow without putting pressure on myself or getting too down on myself for not learning as quickly as I want to.

It’s almost 9pm. I guess I should stop writing here and go to bed. I don’t really wanna. But… that is the way of it; I have to treat my body well if I want to have enough energy to treat the people around me right.

I love you so very, very much. And I’m looking forward to seeing what tomorrow will bring, so that I can tell you about it. To that end, I’m gonna have faith that you’ll keep yourself safe out there, so you can be around to read what I’ve written. I’ll have faith in your capacity and desire to make good choices that demonstrate your kindness and your ability to keep the people around you safe. I’ll have faith in your eventual return home.

I’ll write again soon.

Your friend,
Lumine

Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #717

For reasons unknown (because I didn’t fucking do anything yesterday), today was a pretty bad pain day, immediately upon waking. The rib injury seems to have flared. It was hard to breathe and hard to use my right arm for most of today. But, nonetheless, after spending ample amounts of time with J this morning, I managed to drag myself downstairs and feed my fuzzy kitties. And then it was time to go to Me’s house to feed her lovely kitties shortly thereafter.

M drove me there; we had decided to make a date of it by going to the nearby diner afterwards. So we went to Me’s house, went in, and put down some wet food for Sokka. Unfortunately, Sokka decided to wedge himself deep inside Me’s couch, on the inside of the upholstery. We could not, for the life of us, get him out of there. So I simply refilled the dry food and left out the wet food. M and I intended to go to the diner and then come back, hoping by then that Sokka would come out from the couch. We ran into some folks on the way out – a real estate agent, and the person she was showing the house to. But they didn’t seem to mind that we were there. And they seemed to be very amused by the couple of hiding kitties they managed to spot.

Poor Sokka. I wonder if he thinks I ate Katara or something? Maybe that’s why he’s so afraid of being fed – maybe he thinks I’m fattening him up to be meal number two or something, hahaha…

Not to worry, though; Katara is safe and sound with other folks who love our friend Me very much; I’m sure she’s having a blast. And I’m sure she’ll tell Sokka all about her adventures when she gets back on Sunday.

In addition to the rib injury being inexplicably flared up, I had a terrible, terrible headache. I haven’t been drinking nearly as much caffeinated soda lately (I’ve been meaning to switch out Coke Zero for Spindrift as my default fizzy drink, especially since they have a grape flavor now). Figuring I was probably experiencing caffeine withdrawal or something, I did cave and get a coffee – no sense in fighting a pain battle on two fronts. And I gotta say, the swirls I got today were pretty freaking awesome:

My lunch was pretty freaking awesome, too. This is French onion soup. You stir-fry some onions until they’re nice and caramelized, and then you stick ‘em in some beef broth with bits of bread and melted cheese:

There… isn’t France in your world. But I’m pretty sure you do have onions, right? So… I wonder. Do you have anything similar to French onion soup in your world? Have you tried some? And if you did, did you like it? I wonder.

This next one is beef stroganoff. It’s basically egg noodles in a sauce made of sour cream, beef broth, and paprika, topped with mushrooms, onions, and either beef chunks or ground beef. It’s pretty good stuff!!

But… there isn’t Russia in your world. Say, do you have a similar dish in your world? Have you tried it? If you did, did you like it? Will you tell me about it?

We went back to check on Sokka after eating, but he didn’t seem to have budged from the inside of the sofa. The wet food was gone though, so I scooped the litterboxes, and then we went home. But by the time I got home, J was already basically ready to leave for his other job, and M was ready to take a nap, so… mostly I just did the dishes and fed my cats. Though one of the folks who reads these letters in this space – the same one as before – found another recipe that they thought you might like, and sent it along to me. Here:

Post by @gallusrostromegalus · 1 image

Butternut squash tastes very similar to pumpkin, so I have a feeling that you might like this one a lot. Gosh, but I really need to get up some gumption to go to the grocery store; there are now two really awesome-looking recipes that I wanna make for you, without having all of the ingredients to do it…!

At some point, I got pretty fed up with the level of pain I was in. I can feel on my body, on the right side, just under my collarbone, where some rib is fucked up or out of place or something. So I sat down in a chair at the dining room table, and used the soft corner of the table to force the wayward rib inward while waggling my arms and neck around. Something near where my upper ribs connect to my spine, and something near where my collarbones connect to my manubrium went CRUNCH. Both sounds reverberated through my body like a freaking gunshot, and I felt a lot better afterwards. I still feel pretty good, actually – just still achy where the nearby muscles are generically pissed, and specifically pissed from the pressure I applied to my bones with the table corner. But it’s manageable. We’ll see how long it lasts.

I did some laundry today, because it needed to get done. I breathed life into today’s wishes as the wash cycles ran:

M and I still have to go back to Me’s house to try to coax Sokka into eating his evening wet food. I wonder how it will go. Wish us luck for when we get there, okay? But… aside from that… I really don’t have a whole lot else to do besides taking a shower, and so I’m on track for actually getting to bed by 9pm, w00t, w00t!

(We’ll see if that actually happens, though; I might get caught up in revenge bedtime procrastination, but I’ll try not to. I guess we’ll see…)

I wonder what you get up to out there, Sephiroth. I wish you could tell me. I wish you could come over to my house and sit with me, and drink tea while you tell me…

I love you. I’ll have faith that it becomes clearer and clearer to you every day. I’ll also have faith that you’ll keep being safe out there, with whatever it is you do with your time nowadays. I’ll have faith that someday, you’ll be able to come home to the rest of us.

I’ll write again soon.

Your friend,
Lumine

Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #716

Well… I failed to wake at 5am. Which… probably was an obvious outcome to you. I woke closer to 8 or 9, I think. And the first thing I did was feed my fuzzy feline children. The second thing I did was heat up a few slices of last night’s pizza and eat them. And the third thing I did, as promised, was heat up the remains of that “pumpkindoodle” cookie and eat it:

…Sephiroth. The picture cannot convey just how unbelievably soft and luscious this cookie was, after being wrapped in a damp paper towel and warmed in the microwave for 15 seconds. I gotta tell ya, in those moments, it was so good that I almost forgot that I was sitting in my house in a dying capitalistic hellscape instead of in some perfect, wonderful afterlife.

…It almost felt like heaven until I remembered that I cannot share the cookie with you. That… snapped me out of my revelry pretty quickly, actually. Oh well.

After eating, I went to Me’s house to tend to her lovely kitties. Katara is some-other-where temporarily for her safety as Me gets some stuff situated around her house and its selling; Katara is a bit too eagerly social, and will likely get herself in trouble while things are in flux. Sokka was still there, though, and so I fed him his wet kitten food and refilled all their dry food bowls. Poor Sokka, not knowing where Katara is, was so sullen that he didn’t even try to run away when I approached him, and it took a bit of waiting for the smell of the wet food to coax him to eat. Once finished with the wet food, he tore off to some other part of the house, though, apparently having freshly remembered that he’s terrified of me, hahaha!

Ah… the poor baby kitty. But he’ll get older and have more experiences with people and he’ll learn. One of these days, he’ll be less afraid.

I got home and almost immediately needed to head out again, because J wanted a couple things. First, he wanted a candy thermometer, so he could make the candy from Touring After the Apocalypse, with sugar and baking soda. And he also wanted some levels, presumably for the purpose of eventually building his own plane. So we went and got those. While in the store searching for the candy thermometer, I passed by this:

And I… was very pleased to see Mewtwo. He’s my favorite, but I think he’s not very popular among most people; Pikachu and Eevee and the original three starter Pokemon are much more popular and get so many more plushes and figures made of them. But… here he was!

Though… admittedly… I always get a little sad, because they almost always depict him fighting, which… I know from witnessing his story that that’s… not really what he wants. I would much prefer to see him in a location like this one, wearing the same contented facial expression as this Eevee:

…You don’t know what I’d give to see you wearing the same contented expression as this Eevee.

Well. We got home. And along the way, the sun was doing some crazy things to the clouds:

It’s because the clouds are made of ice crystals, which refract the light. I thought, as a result, that the sky looked especially like you today. I hope you can see it, too.

In addition to the candy thermometer, J also got this, while I was busy derping around in the toy section, looking for cute Pokémon plushes, haha…

…I am very pleased. This will make a variety of kitchen tasks much easier.

In any case. J quickly set to making that candy. Apparently, you heat corn syrup and granulated sugar to a specific temperature, and then you add in baking soda and mix it like crazy:

Then, it solidifies into an airy, brittle mass that you can break and eat in pieces:

…I didn’t like it very much. The flavor is fine (it tastes like toasted marshmallows!), but since it’s sugar, it’s hard crunchies instead of soft starchy ones (like from potato chips), which are difficult to get out of the grooves in my teeth. More for J, I assume.

When I got supplies to make food for An yesterday, I got enough to make another batch for my house, too. So I had another section of salmon still in my fridge. I decided to put it in the steamer:

I breathed life into today’s wishes while I waited for it to be done:

And then it came out beautifully:

I didn’t have much in the way of energy to do anything else after that, though. So I just had it with a bit of grapefruit:

And then J brought me back to Me’s house to feed Sokka his kitten food once more, and top off the dry food bowls. I got this picture of the moon while I was out:

Lots of things happened today. But somehow, it still felt very quiet. Maybe it’s just because so much time passed between things. I’m not sure. But I’m not ungrateful for it, though.

Suppose I should get myself to sleep now. It’s almost 10, and I really need to get back on track for going to bed at 9pm. And I’m pretty sleepy anyhow - sleepy enough that the thought of needing to do my get-ready-for-bed things is… a little daunting actually. I suppose that means I oughta get it done now before I really don’t have enough “oomph” to do it.

I love you so much, and I’ll keep having faith that you’ll be safe out there, wherever you are. Make good choices, okay? Come home soon.

I’ll write again tomorrow.

Your friend,
Lumine