Blackberry pimpen peace teken

277AC, 4th Month
Riverrun
The return of Hoster Tully back to his family’s ancestral seat of Riverrun was one akin to a dog with its tail tucked between its legs. His family had been sent home only two weeks ago, fearing the city unsafe after a servant ransacked through the tower of the hand to breach his privacy. To call King’s Landing a rat’s nest was sufficient… Everybody thought it peaceful, now the riots and chaos of old had died down. Only now the vipers worked in the shadows, their plots and schemes shrouded behind feigned smiles and politeness. It was not a place Hoster had ever liked; and to try sit at the right hand of the king himself would have cost him his soul.
He’d been home a few nights before holding this feast, a huge dinner party. This would be the last chance to have such a gathering before winter began to set in; when so many paths happened to cross at Riverrun. His beloved wife, Minisa, had been dragged from home to the capital and remained ever loving and faithful. She was, as ever, his most prized companions and the only one that warmed his heart on these cold autumn evenings. His daughters all present as well; Ophelia, who remained noble and regal despite being robbed of her prince. Catelyn and then Merry, the two terrors of Tully as they’d been monikered, as quarrelsome and bickering as Hoster and Brynden in their youth. Hoster’s mother Rhea, little sister Eleanor, and even his grandmother Peri had been helped down to the great hall to sup with them.
Truly, this dinner was home to the whole extended family. Brynden sat with a smile writ over his craggy face. He had been something of a shepherd not only for these children assembled, but the castle as a whole. Without him, Hoster would be like a man with no arms. For his loyalty and his devotion to their clan was ironclad, and it was something he could never repay. Hoster’s wife Lyarra and their two girls sat with them, each enjoying their share of sweets and cakes and running rings around their old great grandmother Peri. A few retainers in the form of the old Ser Lewis, the scowling Ser Elys, the cheery Ser Walter and the red-cheeked Red Roy joined in.
At the head of the table was the man himself, patron of House Tully. The last five or six years had been unkind, mentally and physically. What was once a young strapping lad, keen for glory, was now a thoroughly-worn family man. Hoster had lost his huge and well-built physique, maintaining great mass but mainly about the chest and stomach. His beard was flecked with white, now, but a thick red mess that barely concealed his huge smile. The flesh atop his head, now exposed, often caught the candle light much to Brynden’s amusement. And of his greying, pale-red hair, only a token curtain remained. Despite the hilarity, the Lord Paramount of late thirties kept his hair; believing it made him look more wise.
About them was a large roast duck, rich and flavourful, crisp skin that was basted to perfection and a selection of carrots, parsnips and turnips, all grown in Riverrun’s own glass house. In a large bowl, stewed rabbit, caught and skinned by Brynden himself, melded with all the flavours of sweet onion and earthy chestnut mushrooms.Served with honey and butter, there were loaves of fresh-baked bread, rustic and crusty. For the sweeter audience, an apple and blackberry tart, with flaky crust and dollops of dairy cream from the pastures due south. Flagons of dark, dirty ale were on offer for the men and women. Plus, spiced cider, warmed over the stove, with cinnamon to give it a spiced kick. It was, all told, one great big family meal for House Tully to welcome back their lord Hoster.

Alkemia Reviews
Hi everyone, it's me again! This is long overdue, but after placing 2 orders from Alkemia, I finally got around to finishing the reviews of everything I've received. I live in the same state as the folks at Alkemia, so shipping has always been incredibly speedy, and TAT from ordered to shipped has always been within a week. I ordered two of their specially curated sample packs as well as some of the build-your-own ones. I can usually rely on Alkemia to give me 4 to 6 hours worth of wear-time, which I think is valid for oil-based perfumes at this price point.
MY TASTES:
Notes I love: Tea of any kind, rice, cypress, hinoki, bamboo, stone, dust, rain, aquatics, ozone, passion fruit, cherry, raspberry, blackberry, rhubarb, pomegranate, peach, moss, fern, orange blossom, lemon blossom, jasmine, gardenia, lilacs, violets, honeysuckle, forest/tree/evergreen scents of any kind, petrichor, cream, almond, hazelnut, lime, orange, yuzu, creosote, hay, and sweetgrass. These are notes I seek out that actively make me interested in a perfume.
Learning to Like: Honey, incense, amber, wormwood, leather, strong musk, cedar. I have found that many of the scents I've enjoyed include these, but it's very house-dependent. For example, I love Alkemia's honey note, but others are just too much for me.
Notes I’m Wary Of: Fig, melon, pear, cinnamon/clove/strong warm spices other than cardamom, cumin, alcohol notes other than gin or tequila, strong smoke. These aren’t dealbreakers, but I approach them with caution. Pear can go very mealy on my skin, for example, and strong spices can just completely overpower everything else.
Notes I Hate: licorice/anise/fennel/tarragon, coffee, mint, eucalyptus, pumpkin, blueberry, bubblegum, cotton candy. Mint and eucalyptus are sometimes negotiable if the rest of the blend is amazing, I could potentially see the same going for cotton candy/bubble gum, but the others are dead to me. Doesn’t matter how well blended they are, I’ll smell them in there, especially the licorice notes, which smell/taste to me like a tire fire.
Rating System: If it’s 6/10 or above, I’d consider getting it again, and I’ll likely use up my sample. 8/10 means if it’s on sale, I’d buy it in a heartbeat or be delighted to receive it as a gift, but I’m not sure about going for it at full price when I have other options. If it’s 10/10, it’s going to be added to my collection at some point in time. 3/10 to 5/10 means there’s things I like about it but I’d want to change certain things about it in order for me to wear it/enjoy it even more. 2/10 and 1/10 mean that these are just not for me, and 0/10 means I actively regret inflicting this scent upon myself. There are some cases where my personal enjoyment of a scent and my opinion on the objective quality of a scent differ, and I've provided two ratings to reflect both values. My tastes certainly aren't everyone's, after all!
NATURE’S AMBIENCE SAMPLE PACK:
Ammil: Mint. Sadly. I wanted a true cold/frost accord and all I got instead was peppermint. And that only showed up for like, five seconds, before immediately peacing out and leaving a clean white musk. That wasn’t bad by any means, but it wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted a scent that was like inhaling on a cold winter's night and the scent of frost and ice gathers in your nostrils. This wasn't that. 2.5/10
Frondescence: Crushed leaves, trampled ferns, geraniums - these are stronger than I anticipated. I don’t get the patchouli in the slightest. I get something that kind of resembles tomato leaf - on second sniff, I realize this may actually be the patchouli at play. It reminds me of a lusher, wetter version of Pineward’s Meadowmoss, which I quite liked - the tomato leaf in that and the patchouli in this share some DNA, and I think they have a few of the same wildflower notes. A damp and verdant mid-spring cousin to that scent’s dryer, golden, late-summer vibes. 8/10
Esprit de la Terre: Loamy, earthy, spicy - the potting soil under your fingernails cousin to the calmer, more restrained Shinrin-Yoku. That pepperbush note is quite prominent in both scents, but it plays with the leather and the earth notes and the ginger to give it a real bit of bite. It’s pretty in your face; a light hand is best with this. I don’t get rosewood or earl grey, though I really wish I did. I would love to get a slightly floral/fruity quality layered in with this very salt-of-the-earth blend; it’d give it so much depth, and those notes could both provide that pseudo-floral aspect without feeling out of place. 6/10
Moss Maiden: Well this is a delight! It’s sort of like Gaea’s younger, more outgoing sister. It’s airier, though I’m losing the mossy and earthy qualities pretty fast. Instead I’m getting a green leaf note that’s got a sharpness to it which I find quite nice. There’s definitely a slight skin musk quality beneath that, as well, though it’s faint, and it fades fast. It’s definitely an invigorating scent, but not as photorealistic as I wanted it to be. 8.5/10
First Dandelion: First notes that hit me are freshly mown grass - not just the smooshy green note that’s popped up in a lot of the other scents here, but true green grass - and that sticky, bitter scent you get when breaking dandelion stems. It’s the slightly rubbery, astringent smell of the white sap that oozes out of the stem where you’ve snapped off the flower. It’s spot-on, and it’s really impressive. There’s a soil scent, but it’s not the loamy note in Esprit de Terre or Shinrin-Yoku. It’s more clay-like? Not dry, though - more like the wet clay note from Awakening Desert. Odd choice, since that’s not what I think of when I think of where dandelions grow, but I can roll with it. However, there is something oddly floral/sweet in the background which is turning me off hard. Dandelions don’t smell sweet at all to me. They’re bitter, kinda pungent, often pollen-y. So the sweetness here feels out of place, and it’s detracting from the pitch perfect cut grass and broken dandelion stem notes. The note itself isn’t bad, just standing out like a sore thumb. 3.5/10, would be higher if it weren’t for that damn floral aspect.
Mist Becoming Rain: There’s something in this - not the rain notes themselves, but something vaguely botanical behind it - that’s really off putting to me for some reason. It’s not moss or anything floral, I don’t think - maybe the hazel wood? Maybe the orris root? Though I swear I’ve had orris perfumes that didn’t do this. Looking back, I know I have, and it’s not just Alkemia’s orris either, since Dangerous Peach has orris root and I adored that. Perhaps one of the ozonic notes is playing weirdly with my nose? It’s just not super pleasant. This is not the one I expected to dislike so strongly. 2/10
Nocturnes of Honeysuckle: This is kinda forgettable, in truth. I tried this a few separate times and every time, it just sort of blends into a nondescript “sweet white” scent that’s vaguely floral, vaguely vanilla, without any defining characteristics or complexity. Very little honeysuckle itself; again, it all just morphs into the store brand version of a better, more nuanced perfume. Midnight Garden was more interesting, at least. 2/10 I did end up destashing this one to my cousin, since she enjoyed it and I did not.
FLORA AND FAUNA SAMPLE PACK:
Midnight Garden: Sweet, in a sort of sickly way.The tuberose is doing the bubblegum thing, I think. Sad. It’s weird since it doesn’t normally do that for me. It’s a nice white floral otherwise, but my “big beautiful white floral” niche has been filled already. (Elizabeth Taylor’s Gardenia, for anyone wondering. Not indie, but oh well.) 3/10
Gaea: Yes yes yes yes yes yes this a thousand times YES. So I made a mistake and forgot to FS Cocoapink’s Wild Hunt before the seasonal switch. This was heartbreaking, because it was pretty much 100% a match for the forests of my youth (I spent every August in NH’s lakes region and it’s my favorite place on earth). This is not quite there for me—I want more trees along with the moss and the ground—but really, really close, and does exactly what it promises! If I layered this with Wild Hunt... Man, that’d be something. Perfectly photorealistic mossy forest soil scent. It’s perfect in every way. 10/10
Vert Sur le Vert: Someone just mowed their lawn. Wait, no. It’s me. I’m the lawn; consider me mowed. But it’s not just grass, it’s lots of different plants. Again, it has that wet, broken stem note that popped up in a lot of the previous scents, which makes sense since the description literally promises tons of “smooshed greens.” Gotta hand it to ‘em, that is exactly what I got. I think there’s also some fern in here, too, though it’s not listed. I prefer some more foresty/woodsy scents for my green fragrances, so 7/10, but 10/10 for delivering on expectations.
Dryad: I could barely smell this at first. Even now it’s very gentle; there's no sillage at all. It’s a warm, grassy/botanical vanilla. It fades like nobody’s business, sadly. I wish I got more conifers or specific plant notes as opposed to the vague, pale-green melange it turns into. I don't mind when scents are well blended enough that I can't pick out individual notes, but the end result has to at least be interesting. 3/10
Baccante: Blueberry is a death note for me after an incident involving fruit fly larvae, and this heavy on the berry. It’s a pitch-perfect recreation of that wild blueberry flavor, which is why it repulses me so strongly. It does its job so well I can’t stand it, which is a compliment - I just legitimately cannot stomach it. This came with the Flora and Fauna sample pack, or I wouldn’t have ordered it. 0/10 for personal enjoyment since it makes me physically gag, but I know my cousins, who went to the same area frequently and have not had their wild blueberry memories tarnished by worms, will absolutely love this, so 10/10 for delivering on what was promised. If you want wild blueberry, this is the scent for you.
Lover Tells Of Roses: I was on vacation in Seattle recently, and I stopped by a perfume store where I had the chance to try PdM’s Delina and Giardine Benessere’s Rosa Doratea. This scent has a very similar take on rose - fresh, dewy, vernal, not dusty or potpourri at all - though of course it doesn’t have the fruit notes that Delina or RD has. It achieves the same effect with the tea and the green notes, which is a kind of buoyancy which keeps the scent very youthful and playful, and overall leans more dewy rosebud than a rose in full bloom that’s about to turn. The longer this is on my skin, the more the verbena comes out, which checks out because of how strongly my skin amps citrus (or, in this case pseudo-citrus). After about twenty minutes of wear, there is a slightly soapy quality in the drydown, but it’s very faint and it doesn’t really bother me much. 7.5/10, since I feel I have to knock off half a point for the nonexistent longevity - normally not a problem with Alkemia for me, but this was gone within 2 hours.
SAMPLES I PICKED (OR HAD PICKED FOR ME):
Ydalir (Special Reserve Collection): I’ll be real, I was NOT expecting to like this one much, I got it largely to up the order total to 50 bucks so I could try the Jonquil Alchemy. It’s one hell of a smoke bomb. It reminds me of Zoologist T-Rex, but there’s a resinous quality and a… savoriness? Edibility? That T-Rex doesn’t have. I think my smokehouse/barbecue associations are stronger from this one than T-Rex, lmao. I also like T-Rex’s drydown better. Regardless, it was quite the experience, and I’m glad I got to try it even if it wasn’t for me. 2/10 for me personally, but there’s definitely a particular kind of person who would absolutely love this stuff, and it’s a real spectacle that deserves admiration for being what it is - 9/10 for that.
Cherries of the Night (Special Reserve Collection): Oh, but this is something special. It’s that unmistakable cherry flavor, and there’s this rich syrupy quality that I just love. It’s still not quite as juicy as I would like just because of the nature of the scent. When you have the liquor, the amber, the rum that are all present here, they all add warm, sweet qualities, so it still borders between cherry and almond and it lacks the juiciness that makes it the kind of cherry I’m looking for. It’s still leaps and bounds better than Dark Changeling, and I’m seriously tempted to FS this. 9/10
Big Sur: Someone on Fragrantica said this was like a Hollister cologne, and I can’t help but agree with them. :( I was looking for a fresh atmospheric with both green/woodsy and aquatic aspects, and instead I got a very men’s-cologne type of ozonic note (at least I think it’s an ozonic). I suppose I should have expected this from the “If the ocean was a male lover” in the scent description on the webpage, but I didn’t notice that till later. It’s not bad by any means, just not what I was expecting nor something I feel suits me in the slightest, and given the creativity and thoughtfulness some of these other scents have displayed, it’s a bit of a letdown. I’ll probably end up giving this one to my brother, who ended up being the recipient of my Icefall and Nocturnis samples. 4/10 for personal enjoyment/expectations, 6/10 from a more general perspective - it’s a nice cologne, but you can get similar scents for less money elsewhere. I actually ended up giving this to my trans friend! He really liked it :)
Venym: My first free sample from my first order. There’s a lot of interesting notes in this, but at first all I get is bergamot. Again, my skin gives citrus notes a loudspeaker, so this isn’t a shock to me. And now the citrus is fading, and… I’m not quite sure what it left behind. A bit of vanilla, probably the amber? A slightly dark, musky note is making its way to the forefront. That’s maybe the oud, maybe the ebony wood, I don’t know my notes well enough to tell you. I get basically no rose from this. This is okay, but I feel a little let down for some reason. I wanted something a bit more interesting than what was actually there. 4.5/10 Destashed this one to my cousin.
Paradise: My second free sample. Sweet, smooth, inoffensive coconut and vanilla. Kind of sunscreen-esque, but still pleasant. Neither cool nor warm, sort of body temperature, if that makes sense. I don’t know what tiare flower smells like so I can’t say if I’m getting it here, but there’s a sort of rounded, almost skin-scent sort of botanical smell (I don’t know why I know it’s botanical, I just know it is) underneath the more prominent notes, so I wonder if that’s what that is. Slightly sunscreen-like. It’s not bad by any means, but just not how I prefer to execute this particular kind of smell. As it is now, it’s a 5.5/10, but according to the site, this scent is meant to be worn in 80+ degree weather. Ultimately destashed to my cousin.
Lilacs Along The Winding Drive: Barely sweet. Almost not at all. More like the wet scent you get when crushing flower petals. It’s really quite lovely. Dewy, too, and distinctly cool, like an evening breeze. I wish it had slightly more of the nectar quality I think of when I think of lilacs, though, just a bit more of that sweetness. 9/10
Jonquil Alchemy: This, to me, is very similar to Lilacs On The Winding Drive. However, whereas Lilacs is 100% wet and dewy, this has equal parts a wet/broken stem quality and a sort of dry, papery quality to it - not like papyrus or dust or powder, but kind of like the paperwhites you can buy from garden stores around Christmas time. It reminds me of pressed flowers a little. I really like this aspect of it, and I wish it was a bit more prominent, to distinguish it more from Lilacs. 9.5/10
Moss and Honey Alchemy: So, um, I spilled this one in my room. :/ So It’s a good thing I liked it! I was wary of the honey, since it can be so syrupy and overpowering, but the honey isn’t really what stands out in this - I only get it if I try. It’s not a sweet scent at all; it’s a really green, wet, scent, but with more bite and spice and zest than something like Gaea or Frondescence. Almost like parsley? I wonder if it’s some sort of oakmoss note doing this? I’ve never smelled it in isolation, so I wouldn’t know. It’s almost tropical, in a way, or at the very least temperate - it’s rare for me to think of scents I like being both green and warm, but Alkemia has two - one being Traveller and the Moon, the other being this. Fair warning, though, it is aggressively green. I don’t really enjoy it much until the honey note comes out to play, but when it does, I can’t get enough of it. I adore Alkemia’s honey note and it is just stellar here. 8.8/10, too much green (iykyk)
Traveler and the Moon: This one is hard to do justice, but I’ll do my best. This is so well-blended I can’t even pick out individual notes without significant effort. I barely even have the words to describe this scent, so I’ll give a brief description of what it evokes for me instead: In Edo-era Japan, or a world inspired by it, two warriors take off their armor, shelter in a long-abandoned stable, and drink tea brewed by a campfire, sitting on beds of hay and warming their hands as pale moonlight gleams through the gaps in the wooden boards. Their conversation is hushed. They go into battle tomorrow, and both are well aware they may not make it out alive, but they’ve put that aside for tonight. Unisex, understated, and unforgettable. I ordered a full-size of this one in their alcohol-free spray. After Zoologist: Elephant, this is my second favorite scent of all time. 10/10
Haunted and Bewitched: I’ll be real, I don’t normally seek out ambers. But I had this urge to smell utterly delectable and edible, and Alkemia is known both for their sensual/sweet ambers like Foxfire and Ghost Fire and their vanilla/spice/warm gourmands like Silken Tent and Honored Ghosts, so I figured it was worth a try since it’s a kind of hybrid of the two genres. There’s something a little nutty in the opening - I wonder if that’s the ambrette seed? I didn’t get as much of the spice everyone mentions, but I don’t mind that, since it’s still really pleasant. This is kind of the love-child of a “your skin but better” white ambemusk scent and a gourmand mimicking some sort of Persian dessert. There is definitely a clean/fresh laundry aspect to this, though - maybe the white musk? - which I find doesn’t mesh as well, and it only gets more prominent as time goes on. I would have preferred it lean more into a spicieearthiemore “edible” note than that particular musk. It’s like taking a bite of some Turkish delight and finding a bit of dryer sheet. I have to take off points for that, since it’s so jarring in comparison to the rest of the scent. 7.5/10
Edit: After trying this on my clothes, I’m finding this is much better and I don’t get that intrusive dryer sheet note. Paradoxically it seems to go laundry on my skin but not on actual laundry. A second wear a few days later lessens the musk note significantly, as it happens. As it is now, I might FS. Might. 8.5/10
Shinrin-Yoku: This is nice, but it’s definitely more spice-forward than I anticipated. For once, my skin doesn’t force the citrus (in this case, bitter orange) into a starring role. That goes to the spice, wood and incense notes, particularly the spice and the cedar. The overall effect is bracing, bordering on astringent. It’s not quite “cleaning product,” but it’s a little too close - ironic, since there is a subtle but unmistakable soil note in this scent. I prefer my forestry scents more realistic and atmospheric than this, I think. This interpretation of cedar reads more like carpentry than the tree itself. Though not as strongly as Big Sur, this does read slightly masculine to me, though not so much that I wouldn’t feel comfortable wearing it or recommending it to other women. 7/10
Edit: after having tried Macaque Yuzu, that scent is the same citrus + woodsy-without-being-mossy/green structure, but I like Macaque: Yuzu much better. It’s much less foresty (though as I said, Shinrin-Yoku’s attempt at being foresty didn’t impress me) in exchange for brighter and zingier thanks to a punchy yuzu and some fascinating incense notes. It also has the unique distinction of being the only scent I’ve ever smelled which makes me feel like I can fight God.
Awakening Desert: At first this is straight up Calone. Melons. A sweet, watery freshness. Like cracking open a cacti and taking a sip from the liquid inside. Only after that fades can you get the dusty, sandy and earthy notes of the desert itself. I would have named it Desert Oasis, instead, as it’s not as rain-like to me. There is a slightly spiced quality to these notes, though - it’s odd. That could be creosote or sage - I haven’t been to the southwest, so I can’t speak from lived experience. The cactus fruit note is eventually replaced with a more realistic but much fainter rain/ozone note, and a wet clay note starts to come out to play. I like this, but it sadly pales in comparison to Solstice Scents’ Desert Thunderstorm, which is far more realistic doesn’t have that odd juicy-sweetness. Judged in isolation, it’s a 7/10 for me.
More Light!: I also spilled this one, but thankfully it didn’t last long. This is pretty faint as Alkemia scents go. It’s also not a very realistic citrus - there’s a dryness to it which makes it more like orange PEZ candy or Smarties or Kool-Aid powder than true citrus. I prefer my citrus juicy and fresh or bitter and zesty, not powdery and gritty. And fuck, I don’t know what the hell is going on or which note is doing this, but on my skin there’s some sort of note that’s reading to me as potato chip, of all things. The hell? 1/10. This is what the astronauts in that one episode of the Twilight Zone in the Tang bottle smell like. Update: Five to ten minutes after putting this on, I started getting a rash where I applied it, so clearly I’m allergic. 0/10, I’m really batting a thousand today.
Inner Sanctum: This one lasts a long while. I put it on before noon and still smelled like it almost 24 hours later when I woke up. Mostly lemon and vetiver, and a note that goes oddly artificial/plasticky furniture polish. Not much rosewood or hinoki. Resinous but not in a natural way; more glossy than balsamic. Not loving this, tbh. 3/10 I destashed this to my trans friend along with some of my other, more masculine-leaning samples. He’s apparently enjoying them, so I’m glad they found a good home!
Love Among The Ruins: I don’t get stone, moss or lichen from this. Only a faint white floral. Annoying. Please give me earth and stone and ivy and petrichor. Alkemia’s white florals and I are clearly in a love-hate relationship at this point. 2/10
Black Iris: A free sample from my second order. I have little experience with iris notes, so please bear with me. Very powdery; similar to a violet note without the overt sweetness I’ve come to expect from those. The rain is not prominent; it’s very much in the background. It’s not dissimilar to Mist Becoming Rain, though whatever note was skeeving me out in that one isn’t present here. 5/10 - I’ll use up my sample, but I much prefer Lilacs.
A Roll in the Hay: This was the second free sample I received with my second order. Finally, a perfume with actual hay notes I can actually smell! After striking out hard on both Harvest Mouse and Hayloft, I felt like the fragrance world was trying to gaslight me into thinking I didn’t know what hay smelled like. Hayloft smelled like a Quaker Oats granola bar and Harvest Mouse smells like someone left a vanilla pudding pop out in the sun to melt and congeal. But this perfume is everything I wanted Harvest Mouse to be. There’s honey, but it’s a grassy, floral honey that compliments the botanical aspects rather than being too saccharine. To me, it actually shares a bit of DNA with Traveller and the Moon - it’s sort of like each scent is telling the same story but in very different genres, if that makes sense. When I’m no longer able to get that scent, I’ll probably buy this as a replacement. 9.5/10
Dangerous Peach: I ordered this as part of a larger purchase from Surrender to Chance. The single most realistic peach scent I’ve ever smelled. Juicy, delicious, intoxicating. I have absolutely no notes other than WOW. If you want that feeling of biting into a ripe peach and feeling the juice run down your forearm, buy this scent. BRB, getting it in the spray format. 10/10
Mesnee d’Hellequin: Another from Surrender to Chance, which is no longer available for purchase. A nice forest scent, but a) very masculine for reasons I can’t quite place (I think it has something to do with the way the cedar is used in comparison to everything else) and b) a strict adherent to the classic chypre structure. I want complete photorealism in my forest scents, so the chypre skeleton here is the equivalent of seeing the man underneath the suit in a monster movie. 3/10
Dust of Snow: This one goes warm on me for some reason. I think it’s the ginger, or maybe the lemonwood, unless this has been mislabeled (entirely possible since it was from STC). Actually… The more I sniff this, the more I think it was mislabeled. This doesn’t smell remotely like what’s described and I can’t detect a single note that was listed. ??/10, since I don't feel right judging this while having this much doubt about its true identity. If anyone here has tried it, please feel free to weigh in.
Honored Ghosts: From STC’s raspberry perfume sampler pack. Warm, grainy, golden-brown scent, with the texture of pulled taffy or very smooth fudge - not the chocolate kind, the kind that’s just cream and sugar. Penuche, I think they call it. Reminds me a tiny bit of BR540 in terms of that texture, but without the woodsy notes or the ambergris, so a very different structure. The incense portion of the vanilla incense note is only detectable as a part in the background that keeps it from going straight gourmand. I smell none of the raspberry whatsoever, nor the Earl Grey tea, which were the notes I was most looking forward to. 5.5/10
Overall, Alkemia has been a huge hit. I have at least two scents I plan to FS (Dangerous Peach, Gaea, perhaps Lilacs, Cherries, and Roll in the Hay) and have already FS’d Traveller and the Moon.
Samples I have destashed include: Baccante, Paradise, Venym, Big Sur, Shinrin-Yoku, Nocturnes of Honeysuckle, Inner Sanctum, Esprit de la Terre, and my extra sample of Traveller and the Moon, since I have the full size. Some of these I quite liked but knew I wouldn’t end up wearing, so I gave them to homes where they would be appreciated.
I have made a third order to get full bottles of Dangerous Peach and Gaea, and with it got two custom sample packs. The samples I chose for those included Aelfscyne, Lost Highways, Kara Svede, Romance of Lust, St. Louis Cemetery, Mermaids in the Basement, Fireflies in the Garden, Amour Intellectualis, Silken Tent, and I am Made Strange Again. For my free gifts, I got the Amethyst Alchemy (blackberries, black raspberries, and almond blossom, yum!) and their chocolate noir layering note. Please let me know what you think of this order or if you've tried any of these scents yourself!

Title sounds quite racist without any intent. I promise. I'm gonna tell this story in the backwards order. It seems more appropriate.
My partner and I lived in this apartment once back in 2021. It was a small, one bedroom apartment with the built-in bathroom. You'd have to walk through the bedroom in order to use the toilet. It was around 3am in the morning when my partner woke me up; throwing punches in the air and screaming at something that didn't exist.
I asked him, "Why the hell did you do that!?" And he was hysterical - asking if I was really asking him that, if I was also awake. I said yes and he replied, "Did you see the white man standing - hovering - over you then?" I had no idea what he was talking about. He got fed up so he went into the bathroom to check if anyone was there. But it was empty. Just emptiness.
No one was there. His description of the 'person' was that this man had long white hair, pale white face, with the evil grin look on his face while he was hovering over me. Sort of crouching over me. He was trying to grab me. He got very upset so we switched sides. He did not want me to get hurt so we switched.
He couldn't sleep afterwards. I thought he might had been drinking, but he wasn't. He got home late from work and just went straight to bed. Exhaustion? Possibly... If this had been the only time a white, pale man was mentioned in my life.
Back around 2009/2010, I was dragged to a fortune teller with my maternal side of the family. They truly believe in that sort of thing whereas I am quite a skeptic. They'd spend bunch of money that they don't have just to be told their future and fortunes. I was dragged with simply because my foster mother wanted to see if the guy I was dating would turn out to be a millionaire in secret.
The fortune teller started the session off by giving my foster mother her fortune; that she'd be so rich she wouldn't have to work. She'd be flying overseas like a millionaire. She'd be showered with gifts and loves. Then he continued with my grandma, my aunt, my cousin, and then me. I remember specifically what he asked of me:
"You met him, haven't you?" The fuck did he mean by that? "You guys met each other already. A couple years back. The white, pale man. He smiled at you." I was still confused as hell with what he meant by that. "So many weird things happen in your life but you refuse to acknowledge them." I eventually had to ask for clarification because this was so dumb that I couldn't wrap my head around the hell he was on about.
He explained that I had so many paranormal encounters growing up that one would just have to believe them but I refused to and he knew of this. The fortune teller thought it was wise of me to not acknowledge them but he also warned me that it could be a dangerous thing one day. Don't know what he meant, didn't know what he meant by that either.
He then asked about my old, dusty Nokia phone where I had taken a photo that this white pale man was in too. I froze. He asked where I had put it. I told him I had thrown it away. (I honestly couldn't remember. He was a fortune teller - he should know more than I did.) None of my maternal side knew anything about it. My foster mum just kept interrupting him; asking him if I'd be married to a rich man one day so that she could retire in peace without having to lift a finger. (This fortune teller couldn't even tell how greedy my foster mother is. Scam!)
He kept on saying that this white pale man was actually my guardian angel and that I should not be scared of him. I also called bullshit on that.
Around 2004, I wanted to have a Blackberry phone, but my family was so poor that we couldn't afford it. My foster dad got me this second hand old Nokia phone instead. You know, the one with only back camera and no front camera.
It was around 2-3am in the morning while I was still up chatting with my pals overseas. It was summer break so I could stay up for however long I wanted to. (Negligence is a thing.) MySpace was a thing back then and I wanted to post some cute selfies on my profile.
So I did just that. Yes, at 2-3am. Yes, alone in the room. Yes, something did happen.
The room I had my computer in would position like me facing the wall and behind me would be just a large space for a bookshelf, a TV, and a large lounging sofa.
I took several photos with the back camera which means I couldn't see whatever the heck was going on, or what did I look like, or how did I look. Just had to take the chances that one of them would turn out okay. I think I took about 10 photos? None of them was cute, until I got to the last one.
There was a man behind me. He was white, pale. His eyes were black and large. He smiled. His smile was wide from side to side. He had his face on my left shoulder side, as if we were best friends. Somewhat long white hair.
I screamed. I threw the phone away. I don't know if I deleted the photo but I don't have the phone anymore. I freaked out so badly that I had to ask my grandma to share her bedroom with me. I never told anyone in my family about this because they believe in the paranormal stuff and I get annoyed with them each time I told them something of a similar situation.
So, yeah, this is my story. Read it and take however much grain of salt you want. I just thought this would be best put on Reddit and not on TikTok :D

DRAG RACE!
Chronologica struts the runway wearing a stormtrooper outfit, including the face covered by a helmet.
Hello world! Welcome back to Season 6 of Drag Race. And welcome back to my favorite diva Rachelle Mirage! Rachelle, where’s your hometown?
“Cambridge, Massachusetts.” Rachelle smiles teasingly. Chronologica laughs.
What about you, Floss? Where you from?
“Yeah, Cambridge, Mass sounds about right!” The judges laugh.
And our Nymphe D’Azote! Where are you from, Nymphe?
“Bonjour.” Nymphe puts a blue butterfly clip into her hair and smiles at the camera. “I’m from Lyon in France.”
Right. So! For our main challenge this week, our racers gave us a talent show performance to prove their worth and showcase who they really are. And on the runway, they’re telling us where they came from.
“So the theme is Cambridge?” Floss jokes.
“What?” Nymphe looks confused.
It’s TIME!
~
Category is…Hometown Glory.
HerShe Kiss arrives in an outfit straight out of 2002- a Juicy Couture style pink jumpsuit, but glittering for the Gods- every inch of it covered in rhinestones, with blond locks in rollers (as if she’s getting her hair done) and a mobile phone in her hands, HerShe spins around to reveal her behind stoned with the words ‘KISS’ on them.
HerShe Kiss: “Every detail is personalized to the T. It’s HerShe, baby!” HerShe blows a kiss.
Carly Shay Jepsen struts onto the stage in a light-up, neon green miniskirt and bodice, with a neon yellow bra, bright yellow heels and a toxic green wig. Her face is painted with the ‘Glow in the Dark’ style face paint, as she excitedly skips around.
“Atrocious.” Nymphe looks at Carly in fear.
Anne Dior Kashaut arrives in a fitted train conductor look- a plumed feather hat and matching coat in red, a patterned shirt and tight pair of pants, and a blood red boot- as she whistles through the main stage. As she walks, her train- a literal recreation of the Lankelz Railway, formed into a train, follows her.
Vroom vroom, bitch.
Mrs. Vicki Anderson enters the werkroom dressed up as a campy take on the American Bison- with horns, fur and a fitted cute cinched corset in the same colors as her ‘fur’. She puts her hooves up as she makes her way to the end of the stage, giggling with a ‘Mooooooo’.
“Do… Bison moo?” Rachelle asks.
“Do I look like a damn Bison expert?” Floss yells.
Rachelle laughs.
Shayla Moon arrives dressed as a giant, ancient snow monster- an abominable snow person with head to toe blue fur covering her body and a monstrous face mask.
Shayla Moon: “Fort Lauderdale is known for its ‘Snowbirds’- people visiting from the cold cities during winter, to come to Florida… and party.”
Spinning around, Shayla drops the monster suit to reveal a two piece fringe, light up look in multicolored pieces, with a long, flowing wig- and all the body on show as they dance around the main stage.
“Shake that ass, bitch!” Floss snaps her fingers.
Nakomis Lotus struts out in a bodysuit reminiscent of an oil spill, her body neck to foot covered in a slick black substance. She has a wet black wig reflective of a similar color to the tar like substance, as she slinks through the main stage, leaving behind footprints in black.
“Who’s going to clean that?” Nymphe asks.
Francesca La Fataliá arrives with a blood red Venetian Plague mask covering her face, with its long, pointed nose. She wears a Victrian style high-neck dress, hitting the floor and covered in black feathers. She carries various herbs in a glass canister in her hands, before taking off the mask to show her painted, plagued green skin and makeup.
“She’s the Queen here to clean up that oil spill mess.” Floss jokes.
“Wait-” Nymphe looks confused.
The others chuckle.
~
Hi Racers. I’ve made some decisions. This week, everyone’s getting critiqued. Now is a great opportunity to learn what the judges are looking for from you, so listen up!
First up: 2007’s Carly Shay Jepsen! Welcome!
“I will speak on fashion, no? The overall look tonight and the look in the performance were both undercooked and plain.” Nymphe shrugs. “The whole concept you’re going for feels like you have not been able to cook it fully, deliver at the level you could’ve. At Drag Race, I want something polished.”
“I see Nymphe’s point- but to me, that’s part of your charm, right Carly?”
Carly nods, clearly not quite sure about Chronologica’s point.
For me, your talent show- was messy, sure, but really fun and entertaining. It was charming and this runway- I am not going to make excuses for it, but for me, you’re fun!”
“I am here to have fun.” Carly grins.
The polish can come. But, keep your core- your heart.
Carly grins.
The whitest chocolate, HerShe Kiss! Welcome back to the main stage.
“It feels good to be back, and I feel… delicious.” HerShe smiles.
Now, I do want to say something.
HerShe looks concerned.
I was wrong this week. I thought you were kinda… going boring, and you did a fabulous job.
“Ahhh!” HerShe smiles.
This was hot. And surprisingly enough, your runway- whilst I look at it and say ‘That’s hot’, it’s also showcasing a bit of comedy.
“That’s hot.” HerShe says, picking up her phone doing her best Paris Hilton.
Chronologica chuckles.
Nymphe shakes her head. “What about this look says LA?”
“It’s a take on the vapid, hot, celebrity.” HerShe smiles. “Like, too hot to handle, but also, dumb.”
“I can clearly see dumb.” Nymphe nods. “Okay.”
HerShe Kiss: “Was that a compliment?”
Hellodis, it’s Nakomis Lotus. All the votes are in…you made it on TV, girl!
“YES!” Nakomis smiles.
“I haven’t seen Big Brother. Your jokes didn’t land. Next.” Nymphe gestures a hand, as if sweeping Nakomis away.
Nakomis frowns.
“Baby.” Floss frowns. “What was going on?”
Nakomis looks at Floss.
“I feel like you tried a lot. I believe that you are capable of doing a lot- but this week, I was like, damn, you tried to do two conflicting things, instead of one, positive…” Floss sighs. “Choice.”
Anne smiles.
“I thought I could do a lot more than this.” Nakomis says. “I wanted to do something different, and I do get your points, apologies my dear judges.”
It’s not over- you know these games. It’s about the fight.
Nakomis nods. “Thank you.”
Princess Serenity Shayla Moon! Hi, baby.
“Hey hey hey!” Shayla smiles.
“The details of your talent show were too small for us to see exactly what you were doing.” Nymphe closes her eyes. “I didn’t think it was the best choice for a stage performance with the audience at such a distance.”
“Totally will take that feedback on.” Shayla smiles.
In my stormtrooper helmet, I have magnifying vision-
Shayla chuckles.
So for me, it was fun. And let's talk about this look…
“Are you cold?” Nymphe asks.
“I am never cold, because a whore doesn’t get cold, she heats up.” Shayla winks.
Floss, Rachelle, Chronologica and the racers all laugh- besides Anne and Nymphe.
This is a fun concept and idea. Showcase a bit more, and you will go far.
Shayla grins.
Next, let’s talk about our Lady of Loss, Francesca La Fatalia. How do you feel about being on Drag Race?
“It feels ...Fitting.” Franesca smiles,
“I LOVED the talent show.” Rachelle looks excitedly. “You can really tell, you are here, you know your references- your talent show was YOU.”
“This is my home.” Francesca says, holding onto her outfit. “I felt at peace.”
“Truly, I could tell that.” Rachelle says. “And for me, this look is insane.”
Francesca bows.
“What you’re wearing reminds me of a lot of monarchs I’ve seen without a lot of original thoughts.” Nymphe holds her faerie wings around her chest. “You should really make sure that the designs you bring are yours, not someone else’s ideas.”
“Well, the plague doctor is a reference to Venetian culture. This is a hometown glory runway, and I have chosen to reflect upon it with a dark cultural reference. So, yes, I do believe this is my idea, however, I’ve made it my dragged up version- from the shoulders, to the makeup, to the gown.” Francesca responds, looking at Nymphe.
“Hmm..” Nymphe purses her lips in satisfaction. “Okay. I do appreciate your insights. This is a good and polished look.”
Time to cash in on Anne Dior Kashaut. We’re glad you’re here.
Anne smiles. “Hi judges! So happy to be here, I thank you for this opportunity.”
The other Queens look around confused.
Carly Shay Jepsen: “Who the hell is that?!”
Nymphe monologues. “Pour quelqu’un d’origine française, votre esthétique est vraiment décevante et surjouée. Vous n'avez pas l'expérience du concours que vous prétendez avoir, et vous ne resterez pas très longtemps dans cette compétition. C'est fastidieux, pour être honnête, Et je ne suis pas content que vous soyez là. Vous devriez rentrer chez vous avant de vous embarrasser avec et votre manque de talent.”
Anne laughs. “I’m really thankful to be here. I am taking this as an opportunity to learn and develop, and I want to show more. I get that feedback- but I promise I am not overplayed. I really can do a lot here, so please- give me all the feedback.”
I feel like- this was actually not a FUN talent show, you know?
“Okay.” Anne nods.
For me, and I go back to the talent show last week- this can be a fun activity, a physical sport- HOWEVER, you didn’t drag it up enough. Add some bells and whistles. I was worried about other talent shows, and they ended up delivering- however, you did something similarly- and lacked those things.
Anne smiles.
I will need a bit more. This look though- it’s very pretty.
“I will take all this feedback, and promise to deliver.” Anne grins.
And last but not least, from the Peace Garden State, Mrs. Vicki Anderson! Welcome to the show.
“I’ve been waiting for the show, this is my sixth time auditioning!” Vicki laughs.
SIXTH?
“...Yes.” Vicki smiles.
I didn’t remember any of your past tapes, so that says it all.
Vicki looks surprised.
Well, I am happy you’re here, now!
“As am I.” Vicki responds with a grin.
“Your performance was serviceable.” Floss says. “This is a damn talented group. Here, I think you did…not bad, but nothing to stand out.”
“Noted.” Vicki grins.
“You can sing better than the girl from last week.” Nymphe gives Vicki a flat look. “But that’s not saying much.”
Vicki nods.
“Stand out, or step out.” Nymphe shrugs. “Point blank.”
Thank you, racers. Whilst we deliberate, you may untuck backstage in the Fae Lounge. Sponsored by Princess Papaya Glitter Blueberry Drinks.
~
The racers enter the Fae Lounge.
Carly Shay Jepsen: “First week DOWN, and damn, I’m feeling- pretty good!”
“Okay, okay-” Carly turns to the side. “Can you bring us shots to celebrate? Mr Producer…”
“Shots?!” Shayla says dramatically.
“We gotta celebrate, guys!” Carly smiles. “Week 2 group, we’re HERE!”
Carly is handed glasses, and begins to pour, splashing alcohol onto the floor.
“Dear God, let me pour, you’re making a mess.” Francesca says, grabbing the bottle of Tequila as Carly laughs.
“Oh, I do love a shot…” Nakomis says, pursing her lips. “However… maybe I shouldn’t..”
“SHOTS!” Carly yells, as the racers all take a hit of the tequila.
Francesca makes a face. “This is dis-”
“I LOVE my Princess Papaya, Glitter Blackberry Drink.” Shayla raises the bottle. “It’s SO fantastic!”
“It’s actually, ugh- blueberry?” Vicki looks at Shayla.
“OH MY GOD!” Shayla yells, before getting up and running around, as Vicki, HerShe, Carly and a half amused Francesca chuckle.
“I LOOOOOVE my-” HerShe flicks back her hair, smiling. “Princess Papaya Glitter Blueberry drink, baby. It tastes like a winner.”
“YES, FUCK YEAH!” Carly snaps her fingers, as HerShe smiles.
“I feel really happy, with this actually.” HerShe looks excited, sitting down. “Because truly- I came in wanting to deliver, and I had some speed bumps…”
“Certainly Chronologica thought so.” Anne adds, listening in with one headphone in her ear.
“But I came over the other side.” HerShe tears up. “And I want to say, it feels nice, it feels validating, it-” HerShe nods. “I feel hot.”
“I do also want to shout you out, Mama Fatal…” Carly turns to Francesca, who looks slightly surprised as the others clap.
Nakomis sits in her seat, not speaking, but half claps.
“Thank you.” Francesca nods. “Don’t call me Mama Fatal. I’m not that old.”
“Oh, but you remind me a lot of my mother though!” Carly yells.
“I will kill you.” Francesca responds.
Carly shrugs. “Do it, babe!”
“It was nerdy- which to be honest, I didn’t expect out of you.” Shayla starts. “But this is insane- this look, wow?”
“And she made it.” HerShe snaps her fingers. “I listened.”
“WOAH.” Vicki smiles. “That’s..”
“I always make my drag. And it’s layered, there for performance purposes…” Francesca starts. “I just came here to show my drag. To me, that’s fitting, to be in the top.”
“You deserve, Mama Fatal.” HerShe winks.
Francesca rolls her eyes.
“It’s not like she actually is a murderer, right?” Carly jokes. “As much as tries!”
“Tell that to the bodies in my backyard.” Francesca responds.
Carly stares into the camera.
“You know-” Anne looks at Francesca. “I think you did deliver, stylistically. Which is good, as did you, HerShe, with your cheap jumpsuit covered in dollar store rhinestones.”
HerShe looks at Anne.
“But there are others I don’t care for here, visually and personality wise- and certainly..” Anne puts her hand on Nakomis thigh. “That is most clear with you.”
“Wait a minute, don’t go in-” HerShe raises her hand. “Nakomis-”
“Nakomis.” Anne sputters out. “Not only have you failed to deliver in a talent show, you have failed to deliver stylistically. This look is a reflection of poor quality drag, ugly drag, if we are being honest-”
Nakomis stares blankly at the camera in shock.
Nakomis Lotus: “Where is this coming from? Why does she think she can have her La Marias moment? What have I even done to her??”
“Do you even have actual titles?” Nakomis looks squarely at Anne. “Do you actually, or do you just talk mad shit?”
“Drag Miss Luxembourg pageant.” Anne scoffs.
“I’ve never heard of that show, and I do loop in with European artists.” Francesca adds.
Anne huffs.
“You suggested the idea, girl. You told ME it was a good idea, and I wonder, now, along with your attitude here, if that was sabotage-”
“SABOTAGE?” Annne laughs, standing up.
HerShe smiles.
HerShe Kiss: “Oh, Anne picked the wrong fight here…”
“If I wanted to sabotage, I'd leave you be. Because the idea of your drag, in it’s ugly, poor references, it’s atrocious name- what in God's name is a Nakomis, Du rattenartiger, hässlicher, langweiliger Künstler, ohne jegliches Können, ohne TALENT, Platzverschwendung, ich werde dezimieren, ich werde zerstören-”
“Girl, we can’t understand you.” Vicki frowns.
“I could actually sabotage you. Put glass in your makeup-”
Francesca La Fataliá: “Who puts glass in someone’s makeup?” Francesca looks confused. “That isn’t even a….” Francesca shakes her head. “No. Bad idea.”
“I didn’t. So learn your words, and prepare for a lip sync. You’ll need it.” Anne rolls her eyes, walking off.
“...Wow, that was unnecessary.” HerShe says, laughing.
“...More shots?” Carly smiles.
“YES!” Shayla cheers.
Nakomis Lotus: “I do not understand why Anne is so nasty. It’s…”
Anne looks into the mirror, smiling.
Nakomis Lotus: “Kinda giving un-self-aware and tryhard. It’s like she’s trying hard to get airtime by being an ‘iconic villain,’ when in reality she just looks desperate.”
~
Welcome back, racers, I’ve made some decisions.
Vicki, you’re safe.
“Thank you!” Vicki curtseys.
Shayla Moon.
Carly Shay.
You are… safe!
Carly Shay Jepsen: “Woo! Not the first out!”
…
Nakomis.
…
Anne.
You’re SAFE.
Anne looks surprised, then grins. “Thank you!”
…
HerShe looks scared, whilst Franscesca purses her lips into a smirk.
That means…
Francesca La Fataliá.
HerShe Kiss.
I’m sorry my dears…
You are the TOP TWO of the week.
“YES!” HerShe cheers.
Francesca bows.
But that’s not all.
“A TWIST!” Shayla gasps.
This week, you will not only lip sync for the win- but an IMMUNITY POTION that you can use this season… to save yourself… or another from elimination.
Shayla Moon: “This is my Sailor Moon Crystal, and I WILL have it.” Shayla cracks her knuckles. “...I need to steal it. Or seduce the winner for it.”
The time has come… for you to lip sync FOR THE WIN!
**Eaten Alive by Diana Ross starts to play**
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8NTqc14uIY
Good luck… and don’t fuck it up!
HerShe Kiss: “I am here, ready to go, to lip sync for my win, to do ALL I can.” HerShe smiles.
Francesca La Fataliá: “It’s time for me to lip sync. This is what I do. HerShe? It’s time to get Eaten Alive.”
~
Next Time!
Racers, it’s time for a dance challenge.
“Lady Gag.” Ethan says, as Gag joins her team.
Ethan Angel-Eye: “I hate the choices I am forced with.”
“Perform better.” Shiseido looks at Molly.
“Okay, try and actually move, you aged monster.” Molly says, wearing an immunity potion around her neck.
“...Wait a minute.” Vicki stares at Molly. “That’s-”
~
Stats
Voting
Spreadsheet

When I was three years old I was in a really bad car accident. I didn't know it at the time, but that singular event would come to define everything about my life moving forward. What I remember about the accident is mostly a collage of backdated comments I was able to reel out of my father in the following years. He was driving me and my mom in his old '91 Chevy Tahoe through the twisting backroads of Southern Illinois, weaving his way through the gnarled branches of oak trees which interlocked into a braided ceiling overhead. A fog had rolled in, giving the impression that we were driving through a cloudy tube. Everything was simultaneously bright and opaque. I didn't mind though, as I was in the back seat working on a coloring book. My mom was in the front, talking with my dad or turning around to entertain my completed pictures.
Although I was of the age where my memory was just beginning to mature, I still recall two things very clearly from the accident. First was the sensation of breaking. I remember feeling the way a plate must feel to be dropped: weightless at first, then suddenly meeting a much larger, more solid object—the air popped like a firecracker, and the entirety of my body shattered into hundreds of fractals. And then I remember a hand. It was my dad's hand pulling me from the wreck.
I ended up hospitalized for weeks after the crash. My mom was less lucky. The impact had killed her instantly.
As I've alluded to, I was young, and at the time I didn't fully understand the implications of what had happened. I knew something was missing, but it was like a word on the tip of my tongue, or the forgotten vanilla in a cherished cake recipe—coloring my experience, but not the whole of it. Not like my dad. For him, it was the whole fucking cake. He had somehow made it out with only a few scratches. I'm sure he had a really bad case of survivor's guilt, and frankly, looking back, I wouldn't have blamed him if he slumped into despair and spent his days drinking away his sorrow. But he wasn't that type of man. He got help. It took him years before he was able to recall anything that happened that morning, and most of it is still repressed, but he shared with me what he could. Or at least that's what I had thought.
My dad was a Middle School teacher since before I was born, and he kept his job until very recently. As a result, we didn't have much by way of resources. I grew up on Disney Channel and TV dinners for the most part, but I didn't mind. When I became of school age, his job actually made caring for me pretty convenient. Since our Elementary and Middle schools were connected, he was able to drive me there and back each day.
It was around third or fourth grade that I realized I was different. I didn't understand the other children or even the adults most of the time. They would say things then immediately change their mind, or they would talk about something and in the next breath forget its existence entirely. I remember one day at lunch, I had just gotten my tray of hot food and sat down with some friends. One of the kids, Alex, was talking about a stuffed bird he had won for getting first place in Mr. Curtis's pop-up math competition. We were all admiring its blue wings and white belly and sharp black beak and beady eyes. I left mid-conversation to get a chocolate milk. When I came back, I asked to see the bird again, and Alex said "what bird?" I was perplexed. "The bird—the bluejay you were just showing us." I remember all of the other kids looking at me like I was crazy. I figured they were all playing a trick on me, so I got up and went over to Alex's seat and crouched down, looking under the table, then I sprung up and tried to open his lunchbox. "What are you doing!?" he yelled. I felt so confused and embarrassed that I ran to the bathroom to cry.
And then there was another time a group of kids were laughing about a joke one of the girls, Taylor, had made about our homeroom teacher's face looking like a seal. I knew it was mean, but at the time I just wanted to fit in so I played along, but when I made a comment about her resemblance to the semi-aquatic animal, they all looked at me confused. "What are you talking about? We never said that…"
These misattributions kept happening, and it led to me being ostracized from most of the little childish cliques that popped up. I developed a quasi-standoffish temperament which I used as a shield against a chaotic world that I didn't understand. My dad eventually had me tested for ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder), but I passed the test. He asked if I wanted to move to a different town with different schoolmates, thinking that perhaps I was getting bullied, but I told him it was fine. Somewhere deep down I felt like no matter where I went, this problem would follow me.
You may think that I was simply coping with the absence of my mom, and while I'm sure that her absence has left certain holes in my life, kindly, no, that wasn't what was happening. You see, at first I didn't notice the instances of what I'll call "blinking". I simply thought that I was misremembering things: objects, words, events. They were all little things anyway. A bird, a joke, my pencil box. It wasn't until sixth grade that I realized the magnitude of the phenomenon.
I was in my dad's 6th grade Social Studies class and we had just been assigned our "Ancient Civilizations" project which involved creating a diorama of our chosen civilization and presenting its features to the class. My friend at the time, Claire, had taken my first choice of Ancient Rome (which we had a heated argument about at lunch), so I was left with Ancient Egypt. At the time, all I pictured for Egypt was a plate of sand. However, my dad and I went through some illustrated history books and pictures on the internet and he really built up the project for me.
Over the course of a couple months, he helped me shape three pyramids out of small wooden planks and a bunch of tan clay. We placed them in the center of a giant square shoebox lid which served as the container for the diorama. Then he bought some small wooden mannequin puppets and we dressed them up in cloth clothes (mostly kilts and tunics) and colored their eyes, mouths, and hair. We added a few obelisks and some small box-huts which were collected into a little village around the Nile. Finally, we added a light glaze of glue where we felt would be necessary and then covered the whole project with golden glitter.
As we worked on each part of the diorama, my dad helped me understand what we were adding and why it was important to Ancient Egypt. I loved the way he talked about history. He spun everything into a miraculous story. To this day, I don't think I've ever had a teacher who came close to his level of charisma and creativity. As a result, I became really proud of my diorama. I memorized all the little details and rehearsed my speech in front of the mirror for hours leading up to the last couple weeks of class. And then, two days before I was supposed to give my presentation, everything fell apart.
First, I need to apologize for deceiving you about an aspect of my story. I thought it might help you to understand what I was going through at the time. What I'm about to tell you is going to sound insane. I get that. But please hear me out. The truth is that I was never assigned to present on Ancient Egypt; everything else about Clair taking my first pick and dad helping me with the whole project and my excitement leading up to the presentation was all true, but it wasn't a project on Ancient Egypt, it was a project on Ancient Sidovan, which was a civilization located on the eighth continent called "Catalan" (the same name as the spoken language, but unrelated) which was due West of Australia in the Indian Ocean.
I know this sounds incredible, and if you want to believe it's all in my head, I get that, but I remember clearly all sorts of facts about it: the Malagasy, the same people who populated Madagascar, were the first peoples to discover Catalan and settle it. However, about five hundred years later, Indian ships would arrive and create the civilization known as Sidovan. A pidgin language formed between the indigenous population and new arriving Indians called "Hiesa" (pronounced: Hai-E-suh or Hai-ʔ-suh). Catalan had a warm climate with plenty of natural resources, but Sidovan had a dense enough population to require agricultural production. They grew rice, grain, sugarcane, vegetables, and even tobacco.
I remembered all of these facts and more. My diorama reflected the main features of the Sidovan civilization. And then two days before my presentation, I woke up and my diorama was entirely different. The hilly grasslands were traded out for sandy dunes. The Hindu statues and stone palaces became clay pyramids and large spear-like pillars. And everything was covered with the ickiest yellow glitter I had ever seen. Tears stung my eyes as I trampled over to my dad's room and banged on his door. "Dad! What did you do!?" I yelled.
"Honey?" He responded, rushing over to the base of the stairs. "What's wrong?"
"The diorama. It's ruined!"
"It's what?" he asked and ran up the stairs, leading me to my room. He looked over it for a few seconds, checking to see if everything was intact, then said, "I don't see it, honey. Where is it ruined?"
I was completely dumb-struck. What did he mean he didn't see it? "All of it!" I shouted. "The whole thing is wrong. Where's the grass and the stone buildings and the lady with the four arms and the elephants? Where is my project!?"
My dad looked at me in silence. "Lauren, baby, what civilization do you think you were working on?"
"Ancient Sidovan, of course! We've been working on this for months now! Dad, please tell me you remember."
He knelt down and put his hands on my shoulders. "Honey, your project was on Ancient Egypt. There is no Ancient Sidovan."
"Y-you're lying." I protested. "Books, you have books. On your bookshelf."
He took me into his study and showed me all of his books. None of them were on Ancient Sidovan. He even turned on his computer and typed in the name of the civilization, but all that came up was a near match "Sidon". I remember feeling the sudden urge to puke. My entire body felt like it was pumping battery acid instead of blood. "I—I don't," I started but suddenly my head felt very light, and I fainted.
When I woke up, I was in the hospital. I had lost consciousness for over half an hour, enough time for my dad to call 9-1-1 and have the ambulance transport me to the nearest ER. They ran all sorts of tests on me, but they all came back fine. After a couple hours of IV fluids and monitoring, they released me with my dad.
I ended up skipping the rest of school that week. My dad didn't make me present my diorama. In fact, he never brought the subject up again. Part of me was glad. I just wanted to forget the whole thing ever happened. But another part of me couldn't move past what was clearly the most absurd thing to ever happen to me. About a week after the incident, I tried to broach the subject, but when I asked my dad about it, he didn't seem to remember our conversation at all. He said I had fallen ill and that's why I needed to go to the ER and miss class. I felt like I was going crazy. If I was older, I probably would have voluntarily checked myself into a psychiatric ward. But I was young and helpless and alone, and I decided that if I just ignored the changes well enough, I could still get along. This proved difficult though, as the blinking would only exacerbate in the coming months.
Up until the time of the project, I hadn't been able to directly observe the phenomenon. It was always in retrospect that things disappeared. It was during the summer after sixth grade that this changed. I still remember the first time it happened. I had just gotten out of the shower and was drying my hair in front of the mirror. After it was dried, I threw on my clothes then went to tie my hair up in a ponytail, but as I went to set the elastic tie, I felt its weight dissipate in my hand. I gasped and held my hand out. The circular black band was gone.
Fast forward to seventh grade and the blinking had spiraled out of control. Reflecting back on it, most people would probably have assumed I was drinking psilocybin-infused water, as the delusions were somewhat consistent with psychedelic phenomena: except these distortions were real (at least they felt that way to me).
I'd wake up and grab the box of Special K but end up eating Cheerios. The McDonalds logo would look yellow and red one day, but purple and black the next. I'd be watching a show, and then a different show, and then a different one. It was as if the entire universe was a Christmas tree with millions of lights, and the lights kept shifting hues randomly, faster and faster, and I was the only one who could see their changing colors. I remember one night my dad made spaghetti for dinner and we went out onto the porch to eat it. While we were sitting, I saw our neighbor's house, a two story townhome, blink and become a single story bungalow. I gasped, and my dad asked what was wrong, but when I tried to explain he just gave me a strange look. For him, no matter what changed, the world was "always that way". While for me, it didn't have "a way".
The situation peaked when Clair, that friend I mentioned before, disappeared. I texted her (my dad had bought me a BlackBerry at the beginning of summer break) but didn't get a response. When I asked her other friends if they knew where she was, I got the usual "what are you talking about?" look. I knew right away what had happened, even though I didn't want to believe it. I went to the teacher and asked if there was a Clair in our class. She said "no". I broke down in front of everyone. I couldn't take it anymore. I ran out of school. The lady at the front desk tried to stop me, but I just barrelled past her. I kept running until I got to a big park across the street and bawled my eyes out until the police arrived and escorted me home. When they tried asking me what was wrong, I didn't say anything. There was literally nothing I could say that they would understand.
That night I prayed to God for the first time. My dad wasn't a religious man. He went to Catholic church with my mom when she was alive, but after she died he never went back. Still, I knew how to pray, even if I never did it. I copied some of the people I saw praying in movies and interlocked my fingers and knelt down on my bed, stuffing my head into a pillow. "Dear God," I said, "Please, please, please help me." I told Him about my struggles and asked Him to make them stop. I spent an hour saying the same things over and over again. And when I was finished, my little body was so tired, I fell right to sleep.
I knew something was different the second I opened my eyelids. I didn't only feel relieved, but I felt… embraced. I felt like someone was watching over me. I felt like I wasn't alone. I moved through my day with cautious apprehension. I didn't want to get my hopes up only to be let down. But to my surprise, the blinking had stopped. At least I couldn't remember any of the inconsistencies, and to me, that was a win. I began to pray regularly, and the more I did, the more I could feel the sense that someone was looking out for me. It was like I was getting a big hug from some cosmic force that loved me and wanted me to be happy.
I made it a habit to pray regularly. I asked my dad if he could take me to a church, and he agreed to take me to St. Mark's, the same church that he and my mom used to attend. Over time, I realized that the actual church services weren't as important to me as the praying. For whatever reason, there was something about praying that was like a glue for my brain, holding the entire universe together. As I got older, I considered that maybe it wasn't that the changes were no longer happening, but that I simply didn't see them anymore. In other words, maybe I was just becoming like everyone else. Either way, I didn't mind.
In my teenage years, I got into mindfulness meditation. I thought that I'd want to go into religious studies and become a theologian, so I started to learn about Eastern traditions in addition to Christianity. I joined a bunch of different school clubs to meet kids of different faiths: Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam. I tried to find a common thread which linked them all and would explain what happened to me as a child. The metaphors of Heaven and Hell, Good and Evil, the Taoist Yin and Yang—duality. Every religion seemed to speak about a way of being that would lead to a better place. In some cases that better place was a physical future existence, and in others it was merely being in contact with the perfection of nature or the present. Metaphorically, the teachings could explain what I had gone through in a kind of loose way, but there were no explicit statements about my condition.
***
I want to fast forward to why I've decided to write about this now. To give you an idea of where I'm at, I'm now 25 and working on finishing my MA in Computational Linguistics. I know that's a bit of a switch from what I was thinking when I was a teenager, but I really only interested in religion because of the value praying afforded me as a child. I didn't actually have much interest in the subject, itself. After my first year of college, I changed to an English major, which ultimately led to me taking a linguistics class and enjoying it so much that I switched tracks in my Junior year. Considering the state of the world, I thought minoring in Computer Science might help me financially in the future, so I ended up charting a path which I figured might lead to something like developing translation software.
Anyway, everything was going fine until a few weeks ago. I was out at an all-night diner with a few of my friends from the program. There was Jeremy, Martin, Bella, Jordan, and Macy. We had been working on a group project together involving modeling construction grammars by generating primitive 3D structures using C# and running the code through a game engine (it's a bit weird, but essentially we were trying to create a multidimensional model for language using a similar but more advanced concept than other LLMs), and just had a breakthrough. It was 2AM though and not a brain cell existed between the six of us, so instead we focused on a different problem: Macy's ongoing breakup with her semi-long distance trucker boyfriend. We tried to explain why Mike wasn't going to work out as we ordered a round of milkshakes and waited for the lone overnight kitchen worker to scoop out three balls of ice cream from the Deans carton for each of us, blend it, then have the server deliver the vintage diner glasses on a plastic tray.
I dug into my thick strawberry shake with a spoon. It was delicious. I kept eating but focused back on the conversation. I remember feeling something odd about one of the scoops, but I was so entrenched in Macy's story that I didn't notice the metal shard in my ice cream until I felt it against my lip. "P-tuh" I spat out the shard and ice cream all in one motion, then covered my mouth which I was sure was bleeding. The silver blade was probably as large as my thumb, and it had two jagged edges, as if it was fastened for the purpose of causing damage. "What the fuck!" I yelled.
Everyone at the table turned to see what was the matter. "Hey, Lauren, you okay?"
I spoke through a covered mouth, using my free hand to point at the table. "That was in my—"
But it was gone.
"In your… shake? Was something in your shake?" asked Jeremy.
I froze. In that moment, the stories of my childhood that I had only remembered as faint nightmares came back in a wave of crushing terror. How could I have been so stupid to think they would simply vanish forever? No, this isn't the same thing, I thought. But deep down, I knew it was. I drew my hand away from my lips and saw that it was dry—no blood. When I looked back up, all of the blood in my veins went cold. My friends were… smiling at me. Their lips were elastic like taffy, stretching to reveal their teeth. I could feel them radiating malevolence, as if the only thing holding them back from picking up their utensils and stabbing me to death was some thinly veiled force field. The moment lasted for what felt like half a minute, then Jordan said two words which made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
"Found you"
The words ricocheted in my now adrenaline powered skull. But just as he spoke them, the world blinked and my friends were back. Bella reached out and grabbed my hand. I pulled away, but when I saw her concerned expression, I relented.
"Sorry, guys, I think I'm going to have to call it." I said.
"You sure, L?" asked Jordan. "You look like you just saw a ghost."
"Yeah, thanks, but I just…" I stumbled for a lie, but when one wouldn't come, Martin stood up and said he'd walk me out to my car.
"Thanks," I said as I got into my little 2015 Jetta. "It's just been a long day."
"No problem, Lauren. You know, if there's ever anything—"
"I know," I said but didn't mean. Some things just couldn't be shared.
I drove for about five minutes before stopping at a gas station. I pulled in and parked near the back. Then I interlocked my fingers and prayed for half an hour. I apologized for not taking my praying seriously and asked to once again be granted peace. Unlike my younger years, I also drifted into other avenues of thought. I imagined my mom. I pictured the whole arc of my life, all of the little decisions that led me to where I was. I cried for a long time. I felt like that little girl again reaching out for help. I still felt so lost, so out of control; there were so many things missing, and I was so confused.
I decided then to take a trip back home and visit my dad who was now working as a private tutor. He made enough prepping affluent students for the ACT and SAT that he could spend his free time pursuing his real passions: reading and writing. When I arrived at his doorstep that weekend, he greeted me with open arms. "How are you, kiddo? It's been, what? A year or so?"
It was actually more like two years, but I didn't tell him. I just smiled and nodded.
"Well, come in."
The house was almost exactly how I remembered it. Linoleum floors, beige walls, a few scattered pictures, the scent of camomile. Everything minimalist. There was a quaintness, a prettiness to the way everything seemed to be well kept and in a perfect place. From the cherry wood chairs we'd sit in to eat, to the cream-colored loveseat. I felt at home.
I spent the drive thinking of what I would talk to my dad about, but ultimately I wasn't sure what I'd say. I loved my dad, but I think growing up it was easy to see him as naive. After all, arguably the most important episodes of my childhood were completely unknown to him. In that way, I kind of loved him from a distance. Maybe losing my mom also played into that. Maybe I just had trust issues. And after what happened at the diner… Luckily there hadn't been any blinks since.
I stayed for a couple days and he showed me around some of the different coffee shops where he'd tutor kids or write some of his stories. I met some of his friends, mostly other retired or part-time teachers who were in a similar place in life. I was happy for him. Then, on Sunday, he made me my favorite meal growing up: homemade carbonara pasta with chicken and broccoli. The sauce had a few different cheeses, butter, olive oil, and a raw egg yolk. It was the perfect blend of creamy, savory, and sweet. After we ate, he cracked open a scrapbook of some old photos and other clippings he had put together.
We reminisced about the past and laughed whenever I'd cover up one of my awkward pictures. He brought up some stories from school that I had forgotten, naming some teachers that I hadn't thought about in years. Apparently I had started at the end, because as I moved to the other end of the book, I kept getting younger and younger. I flipped to the last pages and noticed a couple pictures of my mom that made my heart sink.
"She was beautiful, wasn't she?" said my dad.
"Mmm," I agreed.
I flipped to the last page and saw a collage of newspaper clippings. One of them was related to the accident. It was headlined: "Two Survive Head-On Collision". After a cursory glance at the text, I noticed something odd. It said, "Both the husband and child, a three year old girl, sustained life-threatening wounds. The husband was found unconscious on the scene. The girl was found twenty meters away from the vehicle, crying." I swallowed, trying to remember back to what happened that day. The feeling of crashing, of the world slowing down, then breaking, returned. And then there was a hand. My dad's hand. Or was it? If he was unconscious, who pulled me out of that wreck?
I looked up at my dad. He was smiling.
I shot up and started backing up slowly toward the door. "No, not you, too. What is this? What's happening? Who are you?"
My dad, or whatever was controlling him, laughed."Oh, Lauren, Lauren, Lauren. You know who we are." he purred as he stood up. He lifted his hands and the lights began to flicker then bend in a way which shouldn't have been possible. Dark figures began to propagate from the shadows along the walls. The pictures nailed there began to blink out of existence. I turned to run toward the door but the handle was gone. Glass shards materialized all around me and swarmed like locusts. Certain I was going to die, I dropped down on my knees and once again turned to prayer, this time asking God to directly intervene and save me.
Everything went quiet.
"Honey? Are you okay?"
I didn't trust his voice. I knew if I opened my eyes, I'd see that awful smile. He was just toying with me. "It's not you," I said in between muttered prayers. "I know it's not you."
"Honey," my dad said, closer. I felt his arms wrap around me. This was it, I was going to be suffocated. I waited for the inevitable crushing weight of my chest collapsing. I waited to break all over again.
"I would never hurt you, Lauren. I love you more than anything in the whole world."
I burst out in tears. "No, it's not you, I know it's not you. You don't exist!"
My dad's weight dissipated. I opened my eyes and saw that he was no longer there. "Dad?" I called aloud. "Dad? Where did you go?"
I checked all over the house, but there was no trace of him. There were still pictures of him all over the house, so I knew he hadn't blinked out of existence like everything else, but somehow he was missing.
***
I left the house and got a room at a hotel, where I am now. I'm sure at this point that whatever is happening to me is no longer random. Something out there is actively trying to hunt me. Maybe it has been my whole life, but only now it can see me—however weird that sounds. If that's right, then God has been on my side trying to protect me from this demon or monster or devil or whatever it is. Regardless, the methods I was using when I was younger are not going to cut it anymore. I already posted my story in several other small circles and have gotten one reply. A man who goes by the name "Trent" (apparently it's an alias). He said that he has some insight into my "condition" and can offer help if I want it. I'm planning on meeting with him tomorrow. I'm not sure if it's a good idea, but at this point I need answers. I can keep you updated with my progress if that interests you, and to anyone who knows anything about what's happening to me, please… I could really use your help.
***
I was just about to post this when Trent sent another message. This is what it says:
Trent: We can do the \*** at **** O'clock. Also, if what you're telling me is true, your mother may still be alive.*

When I was three years old I was in a really bad car accident. I didn't know it at the time, but that singular event would come to define everything about my life moving forward. What I remember about the accident is mostly a collage of backdated comments I was able to reel out of my father in the following years. He was driving me and my mom in his old '91 Chevy Tahoe through the twisting backroads of Southern Illinois, weaving his way through the gnarled branches of oak trees which interlocked into a braided ceiling overhead. A fog had rolled in, giving the impression that we were driving through a cloudy tube. Everything was simultaneously bright and opaque. I didn't mind though, as I was in the back seat working on a coloring book. My mom was in the front, talking with my dad or turning around to entertain my completed pictures.
Although I was of the age where my memory was just beginning to mature, I still recall two things very clearly from the accident. First was the sensation of breaking. I remember feeling the way a plate must feel to be dropped: weightless at first, then suddenly meeting a much larger, more solid object—the air popped like a firecracker, and the entirety of my body shattered into hundreds of fractals. And then I remember a hand. It was my dad's hand pulling me from the wreck.
I ended up hospitalized for weeks after the crash. My mom was less lucky. The impact had killed her instantly.
As I've alluded to, I was young, and at the time I didn't fully understand the implications of what had happened. I knew something was missing, but it was like a word on the tip of my tongue, or the forgotten vanilla in a cherished cake recipe—coloring my experience, but not the whole of it. Not like my dad. For him, it was the whole fucking cake. He had somehow made it out with only a few scratches. I'm sure he had a really bad case of survivor's guilt, and frankly, looking back, I wouldn't have blamed him if he slumped into despair and spent his days drinking away his sorrow. But he wasn't that type of man. He got help. It took him years before he was able to recall anything that happened that morning, and most of it is still repressed, but he shared with me what he could. Or at least that's what I had thought.
My dad was a Middle School teacher since before I was born, and he kept his job until very recently. As a result, we didn't have much by way of resources. I grew up on Disney Channel and TV dinners for the most part, but I didn't mind. When I became of school age, his job actually made caring for me pretty convenient. Since our Elementary and Middle schools were connected, he was able to drive me there and back each day.
It was around third or fourth grade that I realized I was different. I didn't understand the other children or even the adults most of the time. They would say things then immediately change their mind, or they would talk about something and in the next breath forget its existence entirely. I remember one day at lunch, I had just gotten my tray of hot food and sat down with some friends. One of the kids, Alex, was talking about a stuffed bird he had won for getting first place in Mr. Curtis's pop-up math competition. We were all admiring its blue wings and white belly and sharp black beak and beady eyes. I left mid-conversation to get a chocolate milk. When I came back, I asked to see the bird again, and Alex said "what bird?" I was perplexed. "The bird—the bluejay you were just showing us." I remember all of the other kids looking at me like I was crazy. I figured they were all playing a trick on me, so I got up and went over to Alex's seat and crouched down, looking under the table, then I sprung up and tried to open his lunchbox. "What are you doing!?" he yelled. I felt so confused and embarrassed that I ran to the bathroom to cry.
And then there was another time a group of kids were laughing about a joke one of the girls, Taylor, had made about our homeroom teacher's face looking like a seal. I knew it was mean, but at the time I just wanted to fit in so I played along, but when I made a comment about her resemblance to the semi-aquatic animal, they all looked at me confused. "What are you talking about? We never said that…"
These misattributions kept happening, and it led to me being ostracized from most of the little childish cliques that popped up. I developed a quasi-standoffish temperament which I used as a shield against a chaotic world that I didn't understand. My dad eventually had me tested for ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder), but I passed the test. He asked if I wanted to move to a different town with different schoolmates, thinking that perhaps I was getting bullied, but I told him it was fine. Somewhere deep down I felt like no matter where I went, this problem would follow me.
You may think that I was simply coping with the absence of my mom, and while I'm sure that her absence has left certain holes in my life, kindly, no, that wasn't what was happening. You see, at first I didn't notice the instances of what I'll call "blinking". I simply thought that I was misremembering things: objects, words, events. They were all little things anyway. A bird, a joke, my pencil box. It wasn't until sixth grade that I realized the magnitude of the phenomenon.
I was in my dad's 6th grade Social Studies class and we had just been assigned our "Ancient Civilizations" project which involved creating a diorama of our chosen civilization and presenting its features to the class. My friend at the time, Claire, had taken my first choice of Ancient Rome (which we had a heated argument about at lunch), so I was left with Ancient Egypt. At the time, all I pictured for Egypt was a plate of sand. However, my dad and I went through some illustrated history books and pictures on the internet and he really built up the project for me.
Over the course of a couple months, he helped me shape three pyramids out of small wooden planks and a bunch of tan clay. We placed them in the center of a giant square shoebox lid which served as the container for the diorama. Then he bought some small wooden mannequin puppets and we dressed them up in cloth clothes (mostly kilts and tunics) and colored their eyes, mouths, and hair. We added a few obelisks and some small box-huts which were collected into a little village around the Nile. Finally, we added a light glaze of glue where we felt would be necessary and then covered the whole project with golden glitter.
As we worked on each part of the diorama, my dad helped me understand what we were adding and why it was important to Ancient Egypt. I loved the way he talked about history. He spun everything into a miraculous story. To this day, I don't think I've ever had a teacher who came close to his level of charisma and creativity. As a result, I became really proud of my diorama. I memorized all the little details and rehearsed my speech in front of the mirror for hours leading up to the last couple weeks of class. And then, two days before I was supposed to give my presentation, everything fell apart.
First, I need to apologize for deceiving you about an aspect of my story. I thought it might help you to understand what I was going through at the time. What I'm about to tell you is going to sound insane. I get that. But please hear me out. The truth is that I was never assigned to present on Ancient Egypt; everything else about Clair taking my first pick and dad helping me with the whole project and my excitement leading up to the presentation was all true, but it wasn't a project on Ancient Egypt, it was a project on Ancient Sidovan, which was a civilization located on the eighth continent called "Catalan" (the same name as the spoken language, but unrelated) which was due West of Australia in the Indian Ocean.
I know this sounds incredible, and if you want to believe it's all in my head, I get that, but I remember clearly all sorts of facts about it: the Malagasy, the same people who populated Madagascar, were the first peoples to discover Catalan and settle it. However, about five hundred years later, Indian ships would arrive and create the civilization known as Sidovan. A pidgin language formed between the indigenous population and new arriving Indians called "Hiesa" (pronounced: Hai-E-suh or Hai-ʔ-suh). Catalan had a warm climate with plenty of natural resources, but Sidovan had a dense enough population to require agricultural production. They grew rice, grain, sugarcane, vegetables, and even tobacco.
I remembered all of these facts and more. My diorama reflected the main features of the Sidovan civilization. And then two days before my presentation, I woke up and my diorama was entirely different. The hilly grasslands were traded out for sandy dunes. The Hindu statues and stone palaces became clay pyramids and large spear-like pillars. And everything was covered with the ickiest yellow glitter I had ever seen. Tears stung my eyes as I trampled over to my dad's room and banged on his door. "Dad! What did you do!?" I yelled.
"Honey?" He responded, rushing over to the base of the stairs. "What's wrong?"
"The diorama. It's ruined!"
"It's what?" he asked and ran up the stairs, leading me to my room. He looked over it for a few seconds, checking to see if everything was intact, then said, "I don't see it, honey. Where is it ruined?"
I was completely dumb-struck. What did he mean he didn't see it? "All of it!" I shouted. "The whole thing is wrong. Where's the grass and the stone buildings and the lady with the four arms and the elephants? Where is my project!?"
My dad looked at me in silence. "Lauren, baby, what civilization do you think you were working on?"
"Ancient Sidovan, of course! We've been working on this for months now! Dad, please tell me you remember."
He knelt down and put his hands on my shoulders. "Honey, your project was on Ancient Egypt. There is no Ancient Sidovan."
"Y-you're lying." I protested. "Books, you have books. On your bookshelf."
He took me into his study and showed me all of his books. None of them were on Ancient Sidovan. He even turned on his computer and typed in the name of the civilization, but all that came up was a near match "Sidon". I remember feeling the sudden urge to puke. My entire body felt like it was pumping battery acid instead of blood. "I—I don't," I started but suddenly my head felt very light, and I fainted.
When I woke up, I was in the hospital. I had lost consciousness for over half an hour, enough time for my dad to call 9-1-1 and have the ambulance transport me to the nearest ER. They ran all sorts of tests on me, but they all came back fine. After a couple hours of IV fluids and monitoring, they released me with my dad.
I ended up skipping the rest of school that week. My dad didn't make me present my diorama. In fact, he never brought the subject up again. Part of me was glad. I just wanted to forget the whole thing ever happened. But another part of me couldn't move past what was clearly the most absurd thing to ever happen to me. About a week after the incident, I tried to broach the subject, but when I asked my dad about it, he didn't seem to remember our conversation at all. He said I had fallen ill and that's why I needed to go to the ER and miss class. I felt like I was going crazy. If I was older, I probably would have voluntarily checked myself into a psychiatric ward. But I was young and helpless and alone, and I decided that if I just ignored the changes well enough, I could still get along. This proved difficult though, as the blinking would only exacerbate in the coming months.
Up until the time of the project, I hadn't been able to directly observe the phenomenon. It was always in retrospect that things disappeared. It was during the summer after sixth grade that this changed. I still remember the first time it happened. I had just gotten out of the shower and was drying my hair in front of the mirror. After it was dried, I threw on my clothes then went to tie my hair up in a ponytail, but as I went to set the elastic tie, I felt its weight dissipate in my hand. I gasped and held my hand out. The circular black band was gone.
Fast forward to seventh grade and the blinking had spiraled out of control. Reflecting back on it, most people would probably have assumed I was drinking psilocybin-infused water, as the delusions were somewhat consistent with psychedelic phenomena: except these distortions were real (at least they felt that way to me).
I'd wake up and grab the box of Special K but end up eating Cheerios. The McDonalds logo would look yellow and red one day, but purple and black the next. I'd be watching a show, and then a different show, and then a different one. It was as if the entire universe was a Christmas tree with millions of lights, and the lights kept shifting hues randomly, faster and faster, and I was the only one who could see their changing colors. I remember one night my dad made spaghetti for dinner and we went out onto the porch to eat it. While we were sitting, I saw our neighbor's house, a two story townhome, blink and become a single story bungalow. I gasped, and my dad asked what was wrong, but when I tried to explain he just gave me a strange look. For him, no matter what changed, the world was "always that way". While for me, it didn't have "a way".
The situation peaked when Clair, that friend I mentioned before, disappeared. I texted her (my dad had bought me a BlackBerry at the beginning of summer break) but didn't get a response. When I asked her other friends if they knew where she was, I got the usual "what are you talking about?" look. I knew right away what had happened, even though I didn't want to believe it. I went to the teacher and asked if there was a Clair in our class. She said "no". I broke down in front of everyone. I couldn't take it anymore. I ran out of school. The lady at the front desk tried to stop me, but I just barrelled past her. I kept running until I got to a big park across the street and bawled my eyes out until the police arrived and escorted me home. When they tried asking me what was wrong, I didn't say anything. There was literally nothing I could say that they would understand.
That night I prayed to God for the first time. My dad wasn't a religious man. He went to Catholic church with my mom when she was alive, but after she died he never went back. Still, I knew how to pray, even if I never did it. I copied some of the people I saw praying in movies and interlocked my fingers and knelt down on my bed, stuffing my head into a pillow. "Dear God," I said, "Please, please, please help me." I told Him about my struggles and asked Him to make them stop. I spent an hour saying the same things over and over again. And when I was finished, my little body was so tired, I fell right to sleep.
I knew something was different the second I opened my eyelids. I didn't only feel relieved, but I felt… embraced. I felt like someone was watching over me. I felt like I wasn't alone. I moved through my day with cautious apprehension. I didn't want to get my hopes up only to be let down. But to my surprise, the blinking had stopped. At least I couldn't remember any of the inconsistencies, and to me, that was a win. I began to pray regularly, and the more I did, the more I could feel the sense that someone was looking out for me. It was like I was getting a big hug from some cosmic force that loved me and wanted me to be happy.
I made it a habit to pray regularly. I asked my dad if he could take me to a church, and he agreed to take me to St. Mark's, the same church that he and my mom used to attend. Over time, I realized that the actual church services weren't as important to me as the praying. For whatever reason, there was something about praying that was like a glue for my brain, holding the entire universe together. As I got older, I considered that maybe it wasn't that the changes were no longer happening, but that I simply didn't see them anymore. In other words, maybe I was just becoming like everyone else. Either way, I didn't mind.
In my teenage years, I got into mindfulness meditation. I thought that I'd want to go into religious studies and become a theologian, so I started to learn about Eastern traditions in addition to Christianity. I joined a bunch of different school clubs to meet kids of different faiths: Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam. I tried to find a common thread which linked them all and would explain what happened to me as a child. The metaphors of Heaven and Hell, Good and Evil, the Taoist Yin and Yang—duality. Every religion seemed to speak about a way of being that would lead to a better place. In some cases that better place was a physical future existence, and in others it was merely being in contact with the perfection of nature or the present. Metaphorically, the teachings could explain what I had gone through in a kind of loose way, but there were no explicit statements about my condition.
***
I want to fast forward to why I've decided to write about this now. To give you an idea of where I'm at, I'm now 25 and working on finishing my MA in Computational Linguistics. I know that's a bit of a switch from what I was thinking when I was a teenager, but I really only interested in religion because of the value praying afforded me as a child. I didn't actually have much interest in the subject, itself. After my first year of college, I changed to an English major, which ultimately led to me taking a linguistics class and enjoying it so much that I switched tracks in my Junior year. Considering the state of the world, I thought minoring in Computer Science might help me financially in the future, so I ended up charting a path which I figured might lead to something like developing translation software.
Anyway, everything was going fine until a few weeks ago. I was out at an all-night diner with a few of my friends from the program. There was Jeremy, Martin, Bella, Jordan, and Macy. We had been working on a group project together involving modeling construction grammars by generating primitive 3D structures using C# and running the code through a game engine (it's a bit weird, but essentially we were trying to create a multidimensional model for language using a similar but more advanced concept than other LLMs), and just had a breakthrough. It was 2AM though and not a brain cell existed between the six of us, so instead we focused on a different problem: Macy's ongoing breakup with her semi-long distance trucker boyfriend. We tried to explain why Mike wasn't going to work out as we ordered a round of milkshakes and waited for the lone overnight kitchen worker to scoop out three balls of ice cream from the Deans carton for each of us, blend it, then have the server deliver the vintage diner glasses on a plastic tray.
I dug into my thick strawberry shake with a spoon. It was delicious. I kept eating but focused back on the conversation. I remember feeling something odd about one of the scoops, but I was so entrenched in Macy's story that I didn't notice the metal shard in my ice cream until I felt it against my lip. "P-tuh" I spat out the shard and ice cream all in one motion, then covered my mouth which I was sure was bleeding. The silver blade was probably as large as my thumb, and it had two jagged edges, as if it was fastened for the purpose of causing damage. "What the fuck!" I yelled.
Everyone at the table turned to see what was the matter. "Hey, Lauren, you okay?"
I spoke through a covered mouth, using my free hand to point at the table. "That was in my—"
But it was gone.
"In your… shake? Was something in your shake?" asked Jeremy.
I froze. In that moment, the stories of my childhood that I had only remembered as faint nightmares came back in a wave of crushing terror. How could I have been so stupid to think they would simply vanish forever? No, this isn't the same thing, I thought. But deep down, I knew it was. I drew my hand away from my lips and saw that it was dry—no blood. When I looked back up, all of the blood in my veins went cold. My friends were… smiling at me. Their lips were elastic like taffy, stretching to reveal their teeth. I could feel them radiating malevolence, as if the only thing holding them back from picking up their utensils and stabbing me to death was some thinly veiled force field. The moment lasted for what felt like half a minute, then Jordan said two words which made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
"Found you"
The words ricocheted in my now adrenaline powered skull. But just as he spoke them, the world blinked and my friends were back. Bella reached out and grabbed my hand. I pulled away, but when I saw her concerned expression, I relented.
"Sorry, guys, I think I'm going to have to call it." I said.
"You sure, L?" asked Jordan. "You look like you just saw a ghost."
"Yeah, thanks, but I just…" I stumbled for a lie, but when one wouldn't come, Martin stood up and said he'd walk me out to my car.
"Thanks," I said as I got into my little 2015 Jetta. "It's just been a long day."
"No problem, Lauren. You know, if there's ever anything—"
"I know," I said but didn't mean. Some things just couldn't be shared.
I drove for about five minutes before stopping at a gas station. I pulled in and parked near the back. Then I interlocked my fingers and prayed for half an hour. I apologized for not taking my praying seriously and asked to once again be granted peace. Unlike my younger years, I also drifted into other avenues of thought. I imagined my mom. I pictured the whole arc of my life, all of the little decisions that led me to where I was. I cried for a long time. I felt like that little girl again reaching out for help. I still felt so lost, so out of control; there were so many things missing, and I was so confused.
I decided then to take a trip back home and visit my dad who was now working as a private tutor. He made enough prepping affluent students for the ACT and SAT that he could spend his free time pursuing his real passions: reading and writing. When I arrived at his doorstep that weekend, he greeted me with open arms. "How are you, kiddo? It's been, what? A year or so?"
It was actually more like two years, but I didn't tell him. I just smiled and nodded.
"Well, come in."
The house was almost exactly how I remembered it. Linoleum floors, beige walls, a few scattered pictures, the scent of camomile. Everything minimalist. There was a quaintness, a prettiness to the way everything seemed to be well kept and in a perfect place. From the cherry wood chairs we'd sit in to eat, to the cream-colored loveseat. I felt at home.
I spent the drive thinking of what I would talk to my dad about, but ultimately I wasn't sure what I'd say. I loved my dad, but I think growing up it was easy to see him as naive. After all, arguably the most important episodes of my childhood were completely unknown to him. In that way, I kind of loved him from a distance. Maybe losing my mom also played into that. Maybe I just had trust issues. And after what happened at the diner… Luckily there hadn't been any blinks since.
I stayed for a couple days and he showed me around some of the different coffee shops where he'd tutor kids or write some of his stories. I met some of his friends, mostly other retired or part-time teachers who were in a similar place in life. I was happy for him. Then, on Sunday, he made me my favorite meal growing up: homemade carbonara pasta with chicken and broccoli. The sauce had a few different cheeses, butter, olive oil, and a raw egg yolk. It was the perfect blend of creamy, savory, and sweet. After we ate, he cracked open a scrapbook of some old photos and other clippings he had put together.
We reminisced about the past and laughed whenever I'd cover up one of my awkward pictures. He brought up some stories from school that I had forgotten, naming some teachers that I hadn't thought about in years. Apparently I had started at the end, because as I moved to the other end of the book, I kept getting younger and younger. I flipped to the last pages and noticed a couple pictures of my mom that made my heart sink.
"She was beautiful, wasn't she?" said my dad.
"Mmm," I agreed.
I flipped to the last page and saw a collage of newspaper clippings. One of them was related to the accident. It was headlined: "Two Survive Head-On Collision". After a cursory glance at the text, I noticed something odd. It said, "Both the husband and child, a three year old girl, sustained life-threatening wounds. The husband was found unconscious on the scene. The girl was found twenty meters away from the vehicle, crying." I swallowed, trying to remember back to what happened that day. The feeling of crashing, of the world slowing down, then breaking, returned. And then there was a hand. My dad's hand. Or was it? If he was unconscious, who pulled me out of that wreck?
I looked up at my dad. He was smiling.
I shot up and started backing up slowly toward the door. "No, not you, too. What is this? What's happening? Who are you?"
My dad, or whatever was controlling him, laughed."Oh, Lauren, Lauren, Lauren. You know who we are." he purred as he stood up. He lifted his hands and the lights began to flicker then bend in a way which shouldn't have been possible. Dark figures began to propagate from the shadows along the walls. The pictures nailed there began to blink out of existence. I turned to run toward the door but the handle was gone. Glass shards materialized all around me and swarmed like locusts. Certain I was going to die, I dropped down on my knees and once again turned to prayer, this time asking God to directly intervene and save me.
Everything went quiet.
"Honey? Are you okay?"
I didn't trust his voice. I knew if I opened my eyes, I'd see that awful smile. He was just toying with me. "It's not you," I said in between muttered prayers. "I know it's not you."
"Honey," my dad said, closer. I felt his arms wrap around me. This was it, I was going to be suffocated. I waited for the inevitable crushing weight of my chest collapsing. I waited to break all over again.
"I would never hurt you, Lauren. I love you more than anything in the whole world."
I burst out in tears. "No, it's not you, I know it's not you. You don't exist!"
My dad's weight dissipated. I opened my eyes and saw that he was no longer there. "Dad?" I called aloud. "Dad? Where did you go?"
I checked all over the house, but there was no trace of him. There were still pictures of him all over the house, so I knew he hadn't blinked out of existence like everything else, but somehow he was missing.
***
I left the house and got a room at a hotel, where I am now. I'm sure at this point that whatever is happening to me is no longer random. Something out there is actively trying to hunt me. Maybe it has been my whole life, but only now it can see me—however weird that sounds. If that's right, then God has been on my side trying to protect me from this demon or monster or devil or whatever it is. Regardless, the methods I was using when I was younger are not going to cut it anymore. I already posted my story in several other small circles and have gotten one reply. A man who goes by the name "Trent" (apparently it's an alias). He said that he has some insight into my "condition" and can offer help if I want it. I'm planning on meeting with him tomorrow. I'm not sure if it's a good idea, but at this point I need answers. I can keep you updated with my progress if that interests you, and to anyone who knows anything about what's happening to me, please… I could really use your help.
***
I was just about to post this when Trent sent another message. This is what it says:
Trent: We can do the \*** at **** O'clock. Also, if what you're telling me is true, your mother may still be alive.*
Part 2

TW: Alcoholism, drug addiction, violence, suicidal ideation, sex abuse
This is going to be a LLLLLOOONNNNGGGGG one. This story goes back quite a way, but yesterday was the tenth anniversary of the ending to this story and I'm feeling it, still got some guilt about everything that happened, wondering what I could have done differently and I just want to vent it out and hope to get some closure from it.
This story started in 2010.
Characters in this story (names are fake, duh!):

• Me, Guy, 32M at the time, 45 now.
• My BFF Stephanie, 33F at the time.
• Stephen, 40M at the time, Stephanie's boyfriend.
• Maryse, 27F at the time.

Background and intro
I had known Stephanie for many years and we had the kind of friendship that made her BFs and my GFs uncomfortable to put it lightly. We had never crossed that boundary and I wouldn't consider us in the friendzone, we were just friend, but the kind of friend where she would sit on my lap with her arms around my neck or her head on my shoulder.
At the start of 2010, Stephanie met her then boyfriend, Stephen. He tolerated me and my friendship with Stephanie because I also had a gf back then. She liked Stephanie, wasn't at all jealous of my friendship with her, so he didn't deem me too suspicious. Then my gf and I broke up for reasons unimportant and all hell broke loose for Stephen. He became convinced that I would try and steal Stephanie from him. He insisted that Stephanie introduce me to her female friends or female friends of his. Thus began what I called the year of the 50 blind dates. It was probably closer to 20, but still I like saying the year of 50 blind dates. Most of them were unremarkable and never went beyond the first date. There are some fun stories in there if anyone wants to hear them eventually!
In July of that year, I had to switch gears because I had to focus up and study for a professional exam for a certification important to my career. This exam required close to 600-800 hours of study over a 3-4 month period. So I hunkered down, told Stephanie to stop the blind dates for now because I had to focus on that. She respected my wishes and, other a text here or there, we went low contact for the last two months before the exam.
Except for one fateful night in September. Her birthday was in September and she always threw these big bashes at her house. She would throw a big pool party that started around noon and would go on to the wee hours of the morning. I knew she would harass me to go to her party, so I made some quick math and figured I would lose more energy and time trying to dodge her calls, texts and most likely visits at my place than by just going to the party itself. So when she called me to ask, I just said: "Okay I'll go to your damn party, now git." I texted her I would get there in the evening probably around 8. She texted back "Great, can't wait. Now study, bitch!"
So I ultimately get there around 8PM. Basically everybody is already drunk off their gourd. Stephanie sees me, squeals in excitement and runs to me in her bikini and just jumps in the air and slams into me, wraps her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist and gives me a big hug. I hug her back and just keep walking back to the pool where she had started, carrying her with me. I just duck my head around hers and say hi to Stephen, who just glares at me.
She drops back down and I give her her gift. We chat for a few seconds and says "There's beer in the fridge and food in the dining room." I told her I'd be right back.
I go inside and grab a beer from the fridge. I head to the dining room and the table is against the wall with a buffet of sandwiches, tomato pizza, salads, etc. I grab a plate and start putting food on it. I was focused on the task because I was starving. I barely noticed, sitting at the end of the table one of the most stunning woman I have ever seen. I just see her in my peripheral vision and I do a quick double take, quick glance at her and back to the food. I do that a second time. And finally a third time. At that point she is just straight up staring at me and I can't help but chuckle and whisper under my breath "Subtle Guy, sub-tle".
Thankfully she starts laughing too, saving me some embarassment. I look at her and greet her. She says "Hi, I'm Maryse and I'm guessing you're Guy?" I just nod and we start talking. At that point, I just thought I have no shot with her, she's so far out of my league that I'm just gonna talk to her until she sees one of the "models" hanging out by the pool and ditches me for him.
So I'm not feeling like I'm playing for anything, so I'm just myself and not nervous, just talking to her as I would any friend. We chat and she laughs at all my jokes, she gets all my cultural references. She never gets up or ditches me. The plate of food I had made and the beer I had gotten are sitting on the table next to me untouched, I was too busy with the convo to think about food or beer anymore.
After what felt like only 20-30 minutes, Stephanie comes in and tells me, fake grumpy: "So that's where you disappeared to. I invite my best friend to a party and he spends the whole night talking to someone else." I laugh and go: "What do you mean the whole night? I haven't been here that long." She says "Dude, it's 2AM. You've been here for 6 hours..." My jaw dropped and I just said: "Wow, time flies when you're having fun." Maryse chimes in, with a big smile: "It sure does!" That made me happy as you can imagine.
Now I was a little stuck because where Stephanie lived, there's no night service for the bus and the subway had been closed for an hour or so. I figured I would cab it. So I turn to Maryse and tell her: "It was absolutely lovely to meet you and I enjoyed our conversation very much." She says that she did too. I continued with "At the moment, my schedule is incredibly hectic. I'm basically working full-time, studying full-time and sleeping part-time. So I don't have a lot of free time, but if she was interested, whatever little free time I had, I would love to call her or text her to keep on getting to know her."
I see Stephanie in the backgroudnd, looking like a proud mama at how smooth that came out, knowing I was always anything but smooth with women, as proven by the string of blind dates! Maryse has a big smile and we exchange numbers. I go to Stephanie to wish her a happy birthday again. While I'm talking to her, my phone buzzes with a text from Maryse: "Just checking!"
I asked Stephanie "What's the best cab company to call in this area?" Maryse chimes in: "Where do you live?" I tell her where I lived and she goes "It's on the way to where I live, I can give you a ride if you want." Stephanie raised an eyebrow in surprise. I learned later, she did it because it absolutely was not on the way to her place, like, at all. I say that I would love that as it would give us a chance to keep talking.
We get in her car, driving to my place. We talk, she asks me what I'm studying as I hadn't mentioned it earlier. I tell her all about the boring maths I had to study. Much too quickly, we get to my place. She parks in front of my building and we keep talking. At some point, I tell her: "Normally, this is where I would try to "trick" you into coming up to my place..." She interrupts me: "You wouldn't need to trick me. I'm willing and able!"
I tell her that "As tempting as that sounds, I know who I am and I know that if you come up and things proceed to where they're going, I'm not going to be able to study for the rest of the month. I have a kind of obsessive mind and when I find someone or something I like, I can push everything else to the side in favor of that. So to make sure I can still focus on my studying, I have to go up by myself."
She looks at me, a little disappointed but then says, half-jokingly: "We don't have to go up, there's a backseat right there!" We laugh and I give her a kiss and wish her a good night. I managed to stay strong and go back to my condo. Damn it, why did I have to stay strong!!!
My exam was at the beginning of november. During the month of october, we texted a bunch of times and talked on the phone. We went for coffee a couple of times and dinner once. She respected my boundaries and never pushed for more, which I appreciated but also hated at the same time, if that makes sense. The exam came and it was a monster of a Friday. I slept for basically 18 hours after the exam as the adrenalin dropped and my system crashed.
I texted her when I woke up at around 1PM. She was working at the clothing store Stephanie owned. She said "I'm off at 5PM, wanna meet me." I said: "Duh! Why do you think I'm texting? ;)" So I met her at the store downtown. I asked if she wanted to grab a drink, go for dinner, or what. She proposed going to her place and getting some take out. Stephanie who was closing the store at that moment, came up to us and said: "Hey, so what are we doing?" I said: "WE, that is Maryse and I, are going to her place and getting some takeout. Bye!" I'm sure you'll understand when I tell you that no food was ever ordered that night!
Thus followed a whirlwind month of November where any free time we had was spent together, and I wasn't going to complain!
The troubles
By the start of december, things were still going great with us. One saturday night, we were having dinner at a restaurant and I mention that this coming Friday is my office Christmas party, that it's employees only, so we wouln't see each other that night. She tells me: "Oh sure, that's fine! It'll give me a chance to go see some girlfriends I've been neglecting lately." I said "Great! BTW I also got us a reservation at [this great restaurant she had mentioned a few times] for next Saturday, so we could go there and I'll tell you all about my party and you can tell me all about her night with the girls!"
That was settled, I thought. I was wrong. On Thursday, we had spent the evening together at her place and I was about to leave to go back to my place. She tells me: "So are you coming to meet me at the store tomorrow or do I go to your place?" I reminded her: "Neither, tomorrow is my office Christmas party and we won't see each other tomorrow." She said: "Oh right, I forgot." I asked her if she had made plans with her friends like she had mentioned last saturday. She said that they were all busy tomorrow and weren't available.
She suggested "If your party is boring, maybe you could come meet me." I retorted that it wasn't going to be, knowing who was going to be there.
"Yeah but what if?"
"But it won't"
"But what IFFFFFF?" she kept insisting and I kept saying no. After what felt like 30 minutes of that (probably only 2-3 minutes in reality), I had enough and just said to end the argument: "Okay, if it's boring, I'll come. but it won't be." She said: "Cool" with a big smile on her face. I came to learn that that smile meant "Challenge accepted".
The following night, my colleague and I were pregaming in a conference room before leaving for the party proper and my phone buzzes. Maryse was wishing me a good party. I replied. She texted me again. I replied. She texted again, but I was in a conversation with a colleague so I didn't reply or even look at the phone. My phone buzzes again. Still talking, and didn't want to be rude to my colleague. Another buzz. I just kept talking. Phone buzzes differently, she was now calling because I hadn't answered her texts.
"Why aren't you replying to my texts?"
"Hey, sorry, was talking to my colleague Patrick."
"What? you don't want to talk to me?"
"I am talking to you now."
"Why didn't you reply to my texts?"
"Because it would have been rude to my colleague to pull my phone out while talking to him."
"But you're talking to me now."
"Because I thought something was wrong, maybe it was an emergency."
"I wanted to talk to you, that's all."
"Well, gotta go back to the party. Talk to you later."
She kept texting and if I didn't reply right away, she would call after two or three missed texts. After about 2 hours of this, I stopped answering the texts. When she called back, I asked her: "Aren't you supposed to be working?" which started another round of guilt-tripping of "why are you asking me this? you don't want to talk to me?" At that point I had had enough and wanted to enjoy my party. I remembered that the Blackberry (no shaming old tech!) I had had an annoying feature, but I was hoping to put it to good use at that moment.
Whenever the battery would get really low, like less than 1%, it would let out an ear-piercing BEEP for about 3 seconds, reminiding you to charge it and giving you a heart attack all at the same time. It would do that even when you were in silent mode. It had happened a few days earlier when I was with Maryse. I figured, if I press a button on the Blackberry, it would make a beep too that could be heard through the phone. So while I was talking to Maryse, I pressed my thumb on the space bar for a good 3 seconds and sputtered; "what... the .... what?" trying to put on a somewhat believable performance.
She asked what that noise was and I tell her that it was my blackberry letting me know I was low battery and it might shut off any second. I told her "Listen I'm gonna wish you a good night, I'm having a good time at my party so I'll see you tomorrow at 5PM to go spend our evening together. I hope you have a good....." and hung up mid-sentence. I promptly shut my phone off and went back to the party. I concede that I may be a bit of an AH for that move.
The party was great, I got drunk much quicker than I expected owing to the fact that I hadn't had a drink in over two months because Maryse didn't drink so I didn't either when we were together, and we were always together. At 1AM, I went home and passed out on my bed.
This is another place where I may have been an AH. I didn't turn my cell phone back on and I unplugged my home line too, because I wanted to sleep the deep sleep of the drunkard. I woke up at around 1:30 PM, not knowing it was already too late. In my mind, I was meeting Maryse at 5PM to go out on the town that night. Maryse had other ideas as you'll see.
So like I said, I woke up at 1:30PM and was sticky with alcohol sweat, so I went straight for the shower to get clean again. While in the shower, my stomach grumbled with hunger and I started daydreaming of bacon and eggs. That pushed me out of the shower right quick. I dried myself off quickly, tied the towel around my waist and went to the fridge. No bacon.... booo. Looked at the egg compartment... no eggs... booo again. Okay then, how about a cream cheese bagel. No cream cheese, damn it. Look in the pantry, no bagels.... god. I was starting to get angry. Okay, cereals then. I pick up the cereal box, that mofo was empty and I get mad: "who's the idiot who puts the empty box back in the pantry?" I remembered I live alone.
I close the fridge dejected and see the grocery list stuck on the fridge, taunting me with everything I wanted to eat for breakfast written on it. But I felt like if I went to the grocery store hungry as I Was, I'm just gonna pay 600$ and not get one single healthy thing to eat. I then remembered there's a restaurant next to the grocery store that serves breakfast until 3PM. I get excited! I get dressed quickly, grab my wallet and keys, put my boots on, my coat on, wrap my scarf, my tuque and my gloves and go to the restaurant. If you notice, I didn't mention my phone in there.
I get to the restaurant and confirm that they still have breakfast and get even more excited when she confirms it. I order the "heart attack", at least that's how I nicknamed it: 3 eggs, 3 servings of bacon, 2 sausages, and, I guess to give one peace of mind, fruit (or to be precise, one single solitary slice of orange). Now that the food is ordered and coming I figured I would check if I have any messages. I pat the pocket where my phone always is. No phone. uh-oh. I start clutching evert pocket, no luck.
I wonder if I should go back home after the meal before going to the grocery store and decide against it, it would be too long a detour. So I scarf my breakfast down, rush through the grocery store. I get home and set my bags down in front of the fridge. I go pick up my blackberry. I turn it back on. The little tape icon tells me there are messages on my voicemail, at that time there were no red dots with a number in it to tell you how many.
I connect to the voicemail while starting to put the groceries away. The little automated voice tells me "You have 25 new messages." I pull the phone away from my ear, look at it in disbelief as if saying: "are you f'ing kidding me?" So I press 1 to start playing the messages.
Remember: Maryse knew I was at a party with a dead phone, no chargers and I probably wouldn't get home until 1AM. From 6:30PM, when my phone died, to 11:34 PM, when she went to sleep she left me 9 messages. BTW I know she went to sleep at 11:34PM because she left me a message saying "it's 11:34PM and I'm going to bed. Thinking of you." The 9 messages were in the same vein. These are the salient details, but the messages were all much longer.
She woke up at 7:15 the following day, I'll let you guess how I know that tidbit of information! She left me 5 more messages like those from the day before: 7:15 woke up. 7:35 going to take a shower. 7:55 out of the shower. 8:25 getting ready to leave for work 8:50 walking out of the subway to go to the store.
She leaves me another message at 9 that was different. She sounded very excited as if she had had the best idea in the world: "Hey it's 9AM, I'm about to start my shift. I know we're only supposed to meet after my shift, but what if you came and met me for lunch so you could tell me all about your party." I just did my best Scooby-Doo "Ruh-Roh" and chuckled that I blew that, not thinking the calamity that was awaiting me.
Another couple of messages to talk logistics: "I could take my lunch at 12 or 12:30, let me know which you prefer." "I'm taking my lunch at 12:30"
A slightly worried message: "It's 11:15 and you stil have not said if you were coming or not, are you okay?"
The first bomb goes off and I knew I was in trouble then: "Where are you? We're supposed to meet for lunch and you still haven't given me any sign of life, you're not answering your home phone either, what happened?" Reminder: we were not supposed to meet for lunch, she suggested doing so a couple of hours earlier and I never agreed to anything. I guess she told her colleagues I would meet her for lunch and it was now fact and could perhaps make her look bad in front of her colleagues.
The second bomb drops: "It's almost noon now, WHERE ARE YOU? Stephanie says you're probably sleeping off your drunk, but I don't believe her. I'm sure you got yourself a slut and cheated on me. Didn't you? didn't you, you asshole." Stephanie knows me very well, but that wasn't enough for Maryse it seems.
Ensued four more messages from 12:30 to 1:15, where she starts sounding more and more drunk and accusatory, spewing more attacks like in the message above. At that point I already knew it was over, there was no coming back from that. I can understand having trust issues, but that was nuclear. I don't tolerate jealousy because of horrible experiences with a couple of jealous toxic exes.
A final message comes in, and it's a different voice, that of my best friend being more than a little angry: "Hey Guy, listen, Maryse tells me you had a Christmas party yesterday, so I'm guessing you're sleeping off your drunk, still. But call me when you get this. I put Maryse, who's f'ing drunk, in the backstore so she can dry off and "do inventory". She can't be on the sales floor obviously and I just don't feel safe sending her home in the state she's in. Call me to tell me how you want to handle this."
At that point I had finished putting away my groceries and had put my boots and my coat on and was making my way to the subway to go to the store. I call Stephanie and tell her I got the messages and I was coming. She was right, I was sleeping off my drunk and had just woke up (didn't feel the need to mention the breakfast and grocery store). I ask her if she knows what I'm gonna do when I get there. She says that she knows and understands. She knows my bad history.
When I get out of the subway, I call her again before getting to the store. I ask her how she wants me to do this. It's her store and I don't want to create drama in front of her customers. Does she want me to wait outside and she tells Maryse to meet me in the street or do I go in the store and she takes me to the backstore and I do it there? She says to come to the store.
I walk in the store and every saleswomen on the floor looks at me and gives me the biggest case of the stink-eye. They only have Maryse's side of the story, so they think I did all these horrible things. I see Stephanie in the middle of the store and I walk towards her. She shakes her head and points me towards the cash register. I look over there and see Julia, a salesperson that I've known for a couple of years and really like, who also happens to be the biggest gossip in the store. I understand what Stephanie is trying to do. She's gonna make me tell her my story in front of Julia so Julia can spread the "good news" to the other employees and rehabilitate my name possibly.
So I get to the register and say Hi to Julia. She barely acknoledges me. Steph joins me. She asks me:
"How are you?"
"I was better an hour ago, before I listened to those voicemails. I had gone to our office party last night, had a great night, got drunk off my ass, got home at around 2 and woke up around 2."
Julia asks "Maryse told us you were supposed to meet her for lunch."
"No we weren't. I have a reservation for tonight at XYZ restaurant. I was supposed to take the day to do errands, stuff around the condo and meet her here at closing time. She suggested that it could be fun if I came at lunchtime to meet her, but that was never the plan."
Julia asks again "But why didn't you answer your phone?"
"It ran out of battery last night during the party and when I got home, I was so drunk that I forgot to plug it back in. I only plugged it when I woke up at 2. That's when the messages came in."
Julia asks "She says she tried calling your home line and you didn't answer and your machine didn't kick in."
"Yeah, that one's my fault, I knew I wanted to sleep and telemarketers have a habit of calling me early saturday mornings so I didn't want to be awoken by a call for a rug cleaning service, so I unplugged it yesterday morning, knowing I would be drunk when I got home and forget and be angry if I was awakened by a telemarketer."
Julia gave me a hint of a smile, showing me she was starting to believe me. She asked me a few more questions and then she asked what I was gonna do. I told her that whatever I'll do, I would tell Maryse first.
I looked at Stephanie and said: "Can you open the back store so I can go see her?" So we went to the backstore. As we reached the door, it swung opened and out popped Maryse, looking absolutely terrifying, I actually jumped back when I saw her. Her usual perfect makeup was completely smeared, her mascara streaking down her cheeks from the crying. Her hair was disheveled. She was a mess. Apparently, she had had enough of waiting back there and was planning on leaving the store to go home and had put her coat and boots on.
When she saw me, she went into an unhinged rant about me being an asshole for cheating on her, me not being great in bed, me not treating her right, etc. I let her vent everything she had to say, I looked at Stephanie and apologized for creating such a scene in her store. I tell Maryse we should go outside and talk in private. She keeps on yelling, but when I grab her hand to lead her outside, she follows.
When we get outside, her anger had started to wane a little, or maybe just her energy. I was able to talk to her to explain everything, how I had gotten drunk, had overslept (alone) and woke up at 2PM. I reminded her that we were only supposed to meet at 5PM not for lunch. The anger was leaving her and a smile almost appeared on her face. Through all of this I was being very calm and patient with her, which she interpreted as me not being mad at her. I then said in a firmer tone: "However..." and let it hang for a second.
The beginning smile vanished. I continued: "When you accused me of cheating on you, that broke me. That triggered memories of toxic exes who would always accuse me of cheating, not trusting me when I would tell them where I was, snooping on me, stalking me. Because of those experiences, I have a zero tolerance policy for jealousy. I told her that if she was behaving like after only two months of dating, it didn't bode well for the future and I have to protect myself."
At that, the tears started again and she just turned and ran/waddled away. I told her to wait, but she didn't hear me. I turned towards the entrance of the store to see basically all the employees and customers milling around the door trying to catch the drama. I went back inside to talk to my best friend. The mood had definitely changed and no one was giving me the stink eye anymore, but I didn't really care. I was just sad that it had ended, but proud of myself for having stood up for myself.
So AITA for getting drunk and keeping my phone turned off?
There is a lot more to this story and if you want to learn what happened afterwards, then read on.
The immediate aftermath
So I went back inside the store and talked to Stephanie. I told her that I had a reserrvation for XX restaurant and if she wanted to go with Stephen, she could take it, I wasn't in the mood for a dinner. She said "I already have plans for tonight, but thanks for offering." Julia said she would go with me if I wanted, but I just said that I wasn't in the mood to go out. I just wanted to crash and eat a pizza and get into a food coma.
Stephanie said she didn't feel comfortable leaving me by myself and I should join them at her house. They were having friends over to play board games and it could at least distract me a little. I said why not. So brimming with enthusiasm, I went to play bored games. I left early as I wasn't in the mood. I was feeling a little better, but still a bit down. I thanked Stephanie for the invite and left. I got home and just passed out on the bed.
I woke up at around 7AM the next morning and I saw along the corners of the window the tell-tale signs of a snow-drift and got excited as it was the first snow of the season. I pushed the curtains aside and looked on to see a beautiful white carpet outside. It was early enough that very few cars had marred the whiteness. I was admiring it when I noticed that, against the red bricks of the building across the street, there was a pink blotch. As I focused, the blotch became human shaped and I cleared my eyes enough to realize that it was Maryse and she was raising her cell phone to her ear.
On cue, my phone rings. I pick it up. Still sounding drunk, she asks me if we can speak. I ask her to give me five minutes to get dressed and I'll meet her down there. She asks why she can't come up. I say that I'm not sure I want her in my apartment. She says that it's cold out. I say: "Good, then this will be quick."
I get dressed and meet her outside. I'm still bleary-eyed from having woken up 5 minutes ago, but I try to get my wits together. I tell her that we're going to walk to the subway. It 's a 10-minute walk normally, but with her drunkenness, it might take 15-20 minutes. That's how long she has to tell me what she wants to tell me.
She wants to apologize for accusing me of cheating on her. She says she knows I'm a great guy and... I may be the A-hole at this point too, but I start to drift off in my little bubble and start daydreaming about, if I go back to bed, would there still be some residual heat or would it be cold? I could take a hot shower and warm the bed that way. I could still hear her in the background making excuses, saying how she had been cheated on, but I wasn't really listening.
During the daydreaming I notice it got quite quiet. I look on my left and she's not there, I turn around she's a good 5-6 steps behind me looking angry and she says: "you're not listening" I just say: "when you're right, you're right." I tell her that I understand she's been hurt too in the past, and I hope she can work to resolve her issues, but I was done and I'm going back to bed. I was a bit harsh there, but I was tired and still down.
I walk past her and get maybe 10 paces past her when I hear a scream coming from her. I turn around and I see her messing with something inside her coat. She pulls out a chef's knife with like an 8-inch blade. That wakes me the fuck up. Byebye bleary eyes, hello wakefulness. better than a cup of coffee or a red bull I tell you!
So she's got the knife, she's screaming something that I can't quite understand. She gets quiet and then she charges at me with the knife. If I'm being honest I could have stayed where I was and she probably would have missed me anyways, but someone charges at me with a knife, I'm gonna nope out of there. I take a massive side step and once she gets to where I was and realizes that I'm no longer there, she turns her head towards me and says heyyyyy.
At that point, I have a moment of clarity and see what's gonna happen. She's drunk running one way and looking another, I know she's gonna trip. As I predicted, she stumbled over her feet and starts falling to the ground. I start praying to god and anybody who would listen: "Please don't let her cut herself. I don't want to have to explain this to the doctors, EMTs and nurses. I don't want her drunk ass deciding to take revenge on me by saying I did it."
Thankfully, she winds up in a sitting position on the sidewalk holding the knife up and it was clean. Thank god for small miracles. She starts crying and, other moment of clarity, I know she's gonna turn the knife on herself now. I jump towards her and I realize I was right, the knife starts moving towards her left wrist. I tackle her, grab her right wrist and twist it so she drops the knife. I pick the knife back up and put it in my pocket. She looks at me crying and says: "Why did you stop me?"
I pick her up and take her back to my building. In my building there was a couch in the lobby, so I take her there and I sit her down and plop myself next to her. I look at her and wonder out loud: "What am I gonna do with you? What can I do?"
She goes: "Just let me go, I'll be good." I tell her that's not going to happen. I realize I have three options and I give her the three options.
"So here's the choice I give you.
1- I pull out my phone, call 911 and tell them about the attempted murder back there and they send the police to arrest you. I don't want to do that because that could derail your life and not get you the help you need. Besides, they might not do anything anyway as it's your word against mine.
2= I pull out my phone, call 911 and tell them about the attempted suicide back there and that you need to be placed on a 72 hour hold. I could do that, but at the same time, again it's my word against yours, so maybe they don't believe me.
3- I'm gonna hazard a guess here. From what I've seen, you have alcohol problems. So I'm gonna guess you were in AA, had been sober for a while, I want to say 6 months, maybe less, when we met."
She confirms my guess.
"alright so option 3, I'm guessing you had a sponsor in AA." she nods "we call them up and tell them about your relapse and what happened this morning. Can they come get you and take care of you?"
She takes her phone out and picks a contact and calls. She hands me the phone. Someone answers and I explain the situation. They said they were coming right away. I give them my address, they get here 15 minutes later. Maryse had fallen asleep in the meantime, so I wake her up gently and help her to the car. Off she went.
I went back to my apartment and just crashed back to sleep.
A month later
Mid-january, my phone rings and I see Maryse's number on there. I send her to voice mail. Another call. Voicemail again. 5 minutes later, Private number calling. "Gee I wonder who that could be." Voicemail once more.
Afterwards, I didn't get any unidentified callers for a little over a week. One afternoon, I was at work and my phone rings and it's a number I do not recognize. I pick up.
"Hello."
"Hi, is this Guy?"
"Yes, to whom am I speaking?"
"This is Hannah, Maryse's sponsor. we spoke last month." I started fearing the worst.
"Yes, I remember. How can I help you?"
"Maryse tried to reach you last week and you rejected the calls. I think it could help Maryse if you listened to what she had to say. You're obviously not obligated to entertain her, but I think despite everything that happened, you still care about her or you would not have called me that morning."
"You are right, I do still care about Maryse. I'm just not sure how good it would be for her to meet me this soon after everything that happened. I understand wanting to work through the 9th step and making amends, but..." She interrupts me.
"So you know about the steps."
"Yes I have friends in the program. which is how I could guess that she was in the program too that morning."
"You know it's important."
"I know. I know. How about this: we meet in public at a cafe, you would have to be there. Not necessarily at the table with us, but nearby in case she needs help, in case meeting me causes her pain. Tell her I promise to be in a more receptive mood than I was that morning."
So we make an appointment for that saturday afternoon.
I get to the coffee shop. She's already there, and so is her sponsor. I realize happily that she's not wearing makeup. I say happily because that means she understands that this is not a date, but something serious. She's still stunningly beautiful, and I feel sad almost right away.
I grab a coffee and go join her at the table.
"Hey" I say,
"Hey. So this is gonna be uncomfortable, but thank you for agreeing to meet me and for coming, I appreciate it more than you know. I'm sure you heard I quit the store."
"I have, I'm sorry about that, I hope you didn't do it just because of me."
"No, I needed time to focus on myself for now."
She proceeds to tell me about how I wasn't far off with my guess. She had been sober 4 months when we met. Now she had 39 days. She tells me that in AA, if you are single, they recommend not dating anyone new for at least the first year of your sobriety as it can cause issues, similar to what happened with us. I was like her "drug" and as long as I was available, she could get her fix. But the moment I wasn't available all hell broke loose, and that is what led her back to drinking that day.
I told her I'm glad to see her back sober again this quickly and I hope she can get all the help she needs from it. I ask her if she wants to talk to me about her drinking.
She starts to share a story about how she started drinking at around 11 years old. When puberty hit her, she got into a deep depression because the sexual feelings she was starting to feel were triggering responses. As a child she had been abused by two of her uncles repeatedly and her parents never believed her. They accused her of trying to make herself interesting. That was until they caught one of those uncles red-handed.
They finally believed and took the necessary steps to protect their daughter. But they were poor and they couldn't afford therapy. So she never really got help for it. At 11, she started self medicating the depression with alcohol. When alcohol wasn't enough, she added drugs.
At that point, I was full on crying. She asked me if I wanted her to stop. I told her that she doesn't have to stop. That the tears are there because that was one more thing we had in common. I was also a survivor of sexual assault as a child. In my case, it wasn't a family member, it was only a stranger, so it only happened once. But I also self-medicated with alcohol at the onset of puberty, switching to drugs later on too. I was lucky to avoid the pitfalls of addiction, but I was still dealing with my demons, slowly making peace with them.
So there we were, sitting at a coffee shop, both crying and holding each other. I tell her that I think it's great she's getting help for her alcoholism and addicion, but was she doing anything to help with the underlying issue, the original trauma? She said no, she couldn't afford therapy. I tell her that I am a member of a survivors group and if she is interested, I could get her into a meeting and perhaps learn to heal that part of herself too.
She said that she could give it a try. I tell her I have to talk to the other members to know if I can bring someone new and I would let her know. If they said yes, we would go to her first meeting together, I would introduce her and then we would coordinate so that I never went to meetings where she was. I wanted to do that because I wanted her first few meetings to be about healing and I didn't want our own history to be intertwined or mixed in with that.
After that, we left both feeling content and, while not necesarily happy, at peace if you will. Later on, I contacted Stephanie who was one of the "pillars" of the support group (that's how we met) to ask her if it was okay for me to bring in a new member to the group. She said sure. She asked if it was anyone she knew. I told her she would have to meet her at the meeting if she decides to come.
We were having a meeting the following day. I called Maryse, told her the time and place, and she said she would be there. She came to the group meeting and was shocked to see Stephanie there but Stephanie kinda guessed that it was Maryse I was referring to.
I introduce her, we start sharing stories, talking about how we're feeling, etc. The meeting was good and Maryse liked the vibe. So for the first six months after that, I never saw Maryse and we planned which meeting we would be attending to ensure we didn't cross paths. She started feeling much better.
After maybe 2 and a half years, she finally felt ready and she started dating again. She met someone and she fell for him. They were together for about six months, she looked happy. Unfortunately after about six months, she caught him cheating on her. We tried supporting her, being good friends, cursing his name, doing all the things we could to make sure she didn't relapse. But on April 5th 2014, she ODed on heroin. She was hospitalized for 2 weeks after that.
Hannah took her in and she set up a room for Maryse. She was still in a fragile state, so a group of her friends and I started taking turns watching over Maryse, making sure there was always at least one person there with her to keep her company.
Despite our vigilance, on May 14th 2014, when Hannah was out running a quick errand, she was gone maybe 15 minutes tops, Maryse found a way to cut her wrists and she died. We found a note saying that "the OD was not an accident, and neither was that. Thanks for everything you did for me. I love you all, but I can't do this anymore."
It feels good to write that story (I'll just ignore the fat tears rolling down my face!). Thanks for reading this far and sorry for the long story, I just started writing and couldn't stop. I apologize if it was a bit of a bummer.

So far we have seen what the Bible reveals about God and God's attributes, and here we briefly see what the Bible reveals about God's attributes that are also mentioned through other attributes of God and very often are inseparable from some others or from some other attribute.

1. God is invisible

We talked about the fact that God is a "Spirit" and as such He does not have a physical body that we know and that we can see with the naked eye, so we can say that God is invisible to us.
Here are some verses where it says that God is invisible.
"Look, he's walking past me, but I don't see him; it passes and I don't notice it."
Job 9:11
.. Behold, if I go forward, He is not there; if back, I do not find Him; If he works on the left, I don't see Him; if on the right, he took cover, I can't see him."
Job 23:8-9
"No one has ever seen God: the only begotten Son who is in the arms of the Father, He announced Him."
John 1:18
"Who is the form of the invisible God, who was born before all things."
Col. 1:15
,, And to the Eternal King, Incorruptible, who is not seen, to the only all-wise God, honor and glory forever and ever. Amen."
1 Tim. 1:17
,, Who himself has immortality, and lives in light that cannot be approached, whom no man has seen, nor can see, to whom honor and eternal state. Amen."
1 Tim. 6:16
"He left Egypt with faith, not fearing the king's wrath; because they clung to Him who is not seen, as if they saw Him."
Hebrew 11:27

1. God is immeasurable and omnipresent

We said that God is not limited by earthly laws, nor can the essence of God be grasped. In addition, God is everywhere present and immeasurable in everything, such as e.g. creation, knowledge, giving, forgiveness, salvation, etc.
"But will God really live on earth? Here, the sky and the heavens above the heavens cannot contain You, let alone this home that I am building."
1 King 8:27
"For His eyes are turned to the ways of man and He sees all his steps. There is no darkness or shadow of death where those who commit iniquity can hide."
Job 34:21-22
"Where would I go from Your spirit, and where would I flee from Your face? If I go to heaven, You are there. To go down to hell, there you are. To rise on the wings of the dawn, and move to the end of the sea: And there Your hand will lead me, and Your right hand will hold me. To say: Yes if the darkness hides me; but the night is also like light around me. Even the darkness will not be darkened by You, and the night is as bright as the day: darkness is like light. For You created what is in me, You formed me in my mother's womb. I praise You, that I am wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful, and my soul knows it well. Not a single bone of mine has hid from You, even though I was created in secret, woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my embryo, all that was written in Your book, and the days were recorded, when there were none of them yet."
Ps. 139:7-16
"The eyes of the Lord are everywhere, seeing the bad and the good."
Proverbs 15:3
"Am I God from near, says the Lord, and am I not God from afar?" Can someone hide in a secret place so I don't see them? Speaks the Lord; do I not fill heaven and earth? Speaks the Lord."
Jer. 23:23-24
"If they bury themselves in the lowest part of the earth, from there my hand will take them; and if they go up to heaven, I will take them down from there; And if they hide on the top of Carmel, I will find them and take them from there; and to hide before my eyes at the bottom of the sea, there I will command the serpent to bite them"
Amos 9:2-3
"And there is no substance unknown before Him, but everything is naked and exposed before the eyes of the One to whom we speak."
Hebrews 4:13

1. God is reasonable and wise

From the presentations so far, we could conclude that God is reasonable and all-wise, because only such a God can control all events in our visible and also invisible (to us) world.
"In Him is wisdom and strength, in Him is counsel and understanding."
Job 12:13
,, Hear that, Job, stop and look at the miracles of God. Do you know how He arranges them and how He shines with light from His clouds? Do you know how the clouds hang? Do you know the wonders of Him who is perfect in all knowledge? How do your clothes get warm when you soothe the land from the south?"
Job 37:14-17
"How many are Your works, Lord! You have created everything too wisely; the earth is full of Your treasures."
Psalm 104:24
"Great is our Lord and great is His virtue, and there is no measure to His understanding."
Psalm 147:5
"He made the earth by his power, established the earth by his wisdom, and scattered the heavens by his understanding;"
Jer. 10:12
"And to the Eternal King, the Incorruptible, the invisible, the only all-wise God, honor and glory for ever and ever." Amen."
1 Tim. 1:17

1. God is great

God is great because His works prove it and we have those proofs throughout the entire human history.
"Now I see that the Lord is greater than all the gods, because as soon as they pride themselves on him, he surpasses them."
Exod18:11
"Because the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, a great, mighty and terrible God, who does not look at who is who or who accepts gifts;"
Deut.10:17
,, That is why you are great, Lord God, there is no one like you; and there is no God but You, according to all that we have heard with our ears."
2 Sam. 7:22
"For the Most High Lord is awesome, the king is great over the whole earth."
Psalm 47:2
,, God! The way is Your world; what God is so great as our God?"
Psalm 77:13
"The Lord is great, and He should be praised, and His majesty cannot be reached."
Psalm 145:3
"No one is like You, Lord; you are great and great is your name in power."
Jer. 10:6
"And I prayed to the Lord my God and, confessing, I said: O Lord, great and terrible God, who keeps covenant and mercy to those who love You and keep Your commandments;"
Dan. 9:4

1. God is just

We have already mentioned this before, only to say that God is absolutely just, unlike people who do not have justice but like to boast about it.
"The work of that Rock is perfect, because all His ways are justice; God is faithful, without injustice; he is just and true."
Deut. 32:4
"For the Lord is just, he loves justice; the righteous will see His face."
Psalm 11:7
"The Lord is good and just; that's why he shows sinners the way"
Psalm 25:8
"Gentleness and justice are the footstool of Your throne, mercy and truth go before Your face."
Psalm 89:14
"There is a cloud and darkness around Him; gentleness and justice are the footstool of his throne."
Psalm 97:2
"The Lord is good and just, and our God is merciful;"
Psalm 116:5
"You are righteous, Lord, and Your judgments are true."
Psalm 119:137
,, Announce, and bring, let them deliberate together: who said that from ancient times? Who reported back then? Was it not I, Lord? There is no other God besides me, there is no righteous God and Savior other than me."
Isa. 45:21

1. God is patient and slow to anger

We touched on this topic when we said that God is merciful.
"For as the Lord passed in front of him, he cried out: Lord, Lord, God is merciful, compassionate, slow to anger and abundant in mercy and truth."
Exod. 34:6
"The Lord waits for a long time and is abundant in grace, forgives iniquity and sin, but does not justify the guilty, but punishes the iniquity of the father on the sons to the third and fourth generation."
Numbi.14:18
"But You, Lord, God, merciful and gentle, patient and rich in goodness and truth,"
Psalm 86:15
"The Lord is gracious and good, slow to anger and very gentle"
Psalm 103:8
"The Lord is pliant and merciful, long-suffering and of great mercy."
Psalm 145:8
"And tear your hearts, not your clothes, and turn to the Lord your God, for he is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in mercy and repents of evil."
Joel 2:13
,, And he prayed to the Lord and said: Lord! Didn't I say that when I was still in my country? Therefore I would rather flee to Tarshish; because I knew that You are a merciful and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in mercy, and you repent of evil"
Jonah 4:2
"The Lord is slow to anger and has great power; but by no means justice to the guilty; the way of the Lord is in whirlwind and storm, and the clouds are dust from His feet."
Nahum 1:3

1. God is good and gentle

And we talked about this to mention that God does not punish according to what we deserve, but is merciful and gentle and out of great love gives us new chances to repent so we don't perish.
"The Lord is good and just; that's why he shows sinners the way"
Psalm 25:8
"Because You, Lord, are good and merciful and very merciful to all who call on You."
Psalm 86:5
"Because the Lord is good; His mercy is always, and His truth from generation to generation."
Psalm 100:5
"The Lord is good, the city is in trouble, and he knows those who trust in him."
Nahum 1:7
,, And Jesus said to him: Why do you call me gentle? No one is gentle but one God."
Mark 10:18
,, But love your enemies, and do good, and lend without hoping for anything; and you will have a great reward, and you will be sons of the Most High, because He is kind to both the ungrateful and the wicked."
Luke 6:35

1. God is full of love

Because God is full of love, he is also good and gentle and merciful and slow to anger and patient with us, giving us new chances for life.
"The Lord has been appearing to me for a long time. I love you with eternal love, that's why I do you the same favor."
Jeremiah 31:3
"For God so loved the world that He gave His Only Begotten Son, so that no one who believes in Him should perish but have eternal life."
John 3:16
"But God shows his love for us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
Rom. 5:8
"And further, brothers, rejoice, be perfect, be comforted, think alike, have peace: and the God of love and peace will be with you"
2 Cor.13:11
"And he who does not have love does not know God; for God is love."
1 John 4:8
"And we know and believe in the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who stands in love, stands in God and God stands in him."
1 John 4:16

1. God is full of generosity

Everything we receive from grace and grace to the material things we use is a gift from God who takes care of us.
,,Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous his thoughts; and let him return to the Lord, and I will have mercy on him, and on our God, because he forgives a lot."
Isaiah 55:7
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that no one who believes in Him should perish but have eternal life. Because God did not send His Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him."
John 3:16-17
"John answered and said: A man cannot receive anything unless it is given to him from heaven."
John 3:27
"Because he says to Moses: I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and on whom I will have mercy, I will have mercy"
Rom. 9:15
"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, it comes from the Father of light, in whom there is no change or change of light and darkness;"
James 1:17
"Ilia was a mortal man like us, and he prayed to God that it would not rain, and that it would not rain on the earth in three years and six months. And he prayed again and the sky gave rain, and the earth brought forth its crops."
James 5:17-18

1. God is true

Everything we have said so far makes sense only if God is true, and here is the confirmation that God is true.
"The work of that Rock is perfect, because all His ways are justice; God is faithful, without injustice; he is just and true."
Deut. 32:4
"Into Your hands I entrust my spirit; you delivered me, Lord, true God!"
Ps. 31:5
"Whoever blesses himself on earth will be blessed by the true God; and he who bows down on earth, swears by the true God; because the first troubles will be forgotten and will be hidden from my eyes."
Isa. 65:16
"Then Jesus cried out in the church teaching and said: you know me too and you know where I am from; I did not come of my own accord, but there is a True One who sent me, whom you do not know."
John 7:28
"And this is eternal life to know You, the only true God, and whom You sent Jesus Christ."
John 17:3
"For they make known for you what kind of entrance we have to you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the Living and True God."
1 Sol. 1:9
,, And we know that the Son of God came, and gave us understanding to know the True God, and to be in His true Son Jesus Christ. This is the True God and Eternal Life."
1 Jov. 5:20

1. God is faithful

What God promised was being fulfilled, is being fulfilled before our eyes, and will be fulfilled in the future.
,, God is not a man to lie, nor a son of man to repent. What does he say he won't do, and what he says he won't do?"
Numb. 23:19
"And so know that the Lord God is your God, a faithful God, who keeps his covenant and his mercy to a thousand knees to those who love him and keep his commandments."
Deut. 7:9
"And he raises the horn of salvation for us in the house of David his servant, as he says through the mouth of his holy prophets from the ages that he will deliver us from our enemies and from the hands of all who hate us; To show mercy to our fathers, and remind ourselves of our holy covenant, the Curse with which we swore to Abraham our father that he would give us"
Luke 1:69-73
"God is faithful who has called you into the community of his Son Jesus Christ, our Lord."
1 Cor. 1:9
"No other temptation shall come upon you but that of man; but God is faithful, who will not let you be tempted beyond what you are able, but will also make an end with the temptation, so that you can bear it"
1 Cor. 10:13
"He who called you is faithful, and he will do it."
1 Sol. 5:24

1. God is supreme or supreme

God is omniscient, does what is best and can never make a mistake, that's why He is the Most High or the Most High
,,And the Lord said to him: I will cause all my good things to pass before you, and I will call out by name: Lord before you. I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have pity on whom I have pity."
Exod. 33:19
"Our God is in the heavens, he creates everything he wants."
Ps. 115:3
Whatever He wills, the Lord does everything, in the heavens and on the earth, in the seas and in all the deeps."
Ps. 135:6
"At that hour, Jesus rejoiced in spirit and said: I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You hid this from the wise and intelligent, but You told the simple. Yes, Father, because it was Your will.
Lk. 10:21
"Having shown us the secret of His will, according to His good pleasure which He had previously shown in Him,
For the ordinance of the executor of the times, that all things in the heavens and on the earth may be gathered together in Christ; in Him, through whom we also became heirs, predestined beforehand by the order of God who does all things according to the counsel of his will."
Eph. 1:9-11
"For it is God who works in you that you will and do as pleases Him."
Phil. 2:13

1. God is zealous - a jealous God

,, Do not have other gods beside me. Do not make for yourself a graven image or any image of what is in heaven above, or on the earth below, or in the water, under the earth. Do not bow down to them or serve them, because I am the Lord God yours, zealous God, who visit the sins of the fathers on the sons to the third and to the fourth generation, those who hate me;"
Exod. 20:3-5
"Because you should not worship another God: because the Lord is called a zealot, God is a zealot."
Exod. 34:14
"For the Lord your God is a consuming fire and a jealous God."
Deut. 4:24
"Don't have other gods besides me. Do not make for yourself a graven image, or any image of anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth below or that is in the water under the earth. Do not bow down to them or serve them, for I am the Lord your God, a jealous God, who I visit the sons of the iniquities of their fathers to the third generation to the fourth generation, of those who hate me."
Deut. 5:7-9
"Because God is jealous, the Lord your God in the midst of you, so that the Lord your God does not become angry with you and destroy you from the land."
Deut. 6:15
"And Jesus said to the people: You cannot serve the Lord, because he is a holy God, a jealous God, he will not tolerate your unbelief and your sins."
Joshua 24:19

1. God is full of majesty

,, To Israel! There is no one like God, who goes through the sky to help you, and in his majesty on the clouds."
Deut. 33:26
"Lord, our Lord! How glorious is Your name throughout the earth! You have raised your glory to the highest heavens"
Psalm 8:1
"Enter the rock, and hide yourself in the dust from the fear of the Lord and from the glory of His majesty."
Isa 2:10
,, Yours, Lord, is majesty and power and glory and eternity and honor, and all that is in heaven and on earth; Yours, Lord, is the kingdom, and You are exalted, above all the Head;
1 Chron. 29:11
"Praise Him according to His power, praise Him according to His high majesty."
Ps. 150:2

1. God is full of glory

"The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims the works of His hands."
Psalm 19:1
"And they will sing the ways of the Lord, because the glory of the Lord is great."
Ps. 138:5
,, And above in the sky that was above their heads, it was like a throne, in appearance like a sapphire stone, and on the throne it was like a man in appearance. And I saw like a strong light, and inside it like fire all around, from the thighs up, and from the thighs down I saw like fire and light around him. Like a rainbow in a cloud when it's raining, so was the light all around to the eyes. It was the sight of the glory of God in the eyes; and when I saw, I fell on my face, and I heard the voice of Someone speaking."
Ezekiel 1:26-28
"God came from Teman and the Saint from Mount Faran; His glory covers the heavens and the earth is filled with His praise. His light was like the sun, rays came out of His hands, and His power was hidden there"
Habakkuk 3:3-4
,, And the word became flesh and moved into us full of grace and truth; and we saw His glory, the glory, as the Only Begotten of the Father."
John 1:14
,, And he said: People, brothers and fathers! Listen. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he moved to Haran."
Acts 7:2
"Waiting for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ,"
Titus 2:13
,,Saying: Amen; blessing and glory and wisdom and praise and honor and power and strength to our God forever and ever. Amen."
Rev. 7:12
"And after this I heard a great voice of many people in heaven saying: Alleluia! Salvation and glory and honor and power to our Lord;
Rev. 19:1

1. God fills heaven and earth

,, But will God really dwell on earth? Here, the sky and the heavens above the heavens cannot contain You, let alone this home that I am building?"
1 Kings 8:27
"And who could build a home for Him when the sky and the heavens above the heavens cannot contain Him?" And who am I to build him a home? But only to burn incense before Him."
2 Days 2:6
"But will God really live on earth? Here, the sky, and the heavens above the heavens cannot contain You, let alone this home that I am building."
2 Dnev. 6:18
"Can someone hide in a secret place so I don't see them?" Speaks the Lord; do I not fill heaven and earth? Speaks the Lord."
Jer. 23:24

1. God saw

"And He was seen shining in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake Him."
John 1:5
"Bless, my soul, Lord!" Lord, my God, you are very great, you have clothed yourself in majesty and beauty. You put on light like a garment, spread out the sky like a tent;"
Psalm 104:1-2
,, You will no longer see the sun by day, nor will the bright moon shine on you; but the Lord will be your light forever and your God will be your glory."
Isa. 60:19
"His light was like the sun, rays came out of His hands, and His power was hidden there."
Habakkuk 3:4
,,Who himself has immortality, and lives in a light that cannot be approached, whom no man has seen, nor can see, to whom honor and eternal state. Amen."
1 Tim.6:16
"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, it comes from the Father of light, in whom there is no changing, no changing of light and darkness;"
James 1:17

1. God is immortal

"It will pass, and You will remain; they will all wear out like a dress, you will change them like a dress and they will change. But You are the same and Your years will not expire."
Psalm 102:26-27
"And he changed the glory of the eternal God into the form of mortal man and birds and four-footed animals and beasts."
Rom. 1:23
"And to the Eternal King, the Incorruptible, the invisible, the only all-wise God, honor and glory for ever and ever." Amen"
1 Tim.1:17
,,Who himself has immortality, and lives in a light that cannot be approached, whom no man has seen, nor can see, to whom honor and eternal state. Amen."
1 Tim.6:16
"She will pass away, and You remain: and they will all grow old like a dress, And you will fold them like a dress, and they will change: and You are the same One, and Your years will not disappear."
Hebrews 1:11-12

1. God is a consuming fire

,, And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from a blackberry. And he looked, and that blackberry was burning with fire, but not burning."
Exod.3:2
"And Mount Sinai is all smoking, because the Lord descended on it in fire; and smoke rose from it like smoke from a furnace, and the whole mountain shook very much"
Exod.19:18
"For the Lord your God is a consuming fire and a jealous God."
Deut. 4:24
"Know therefore today that the Lord your God, who goes before you, is a consuming fire; He will destroy them and He will strike them down before you, and you will drive them out and destroy them quickly, as the Lord told you."
Deut. 9:3
"Sinners in Zion will be afraid, they will tremble at the hypocrites, and they will say: Who among us will be left with the consuming fire? Who among us will remain in the eternal heat?"
Isaiah 33:14
"And I saw like a bright light, and inside it like fire all around, from the thighs up, and from the thighs down I saw like fire and light around it."
Ezekiel 1:27

1. God is a just judge

We have mentioned many attributes of God, but the completeness of everything is when we mention that, in addition to everything, God is also a just judge. That he is a just judge comes from many features that we have studied, and simply some features would not be complete if God were not a just judge. This is one of qualities that many ignore, thinking that God is only love or mercy, but in the Bible we find very serious warnings that tell us that God is a just judge and that he will judge every sin that is not covered by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ and that is acknowledged and forgiven. that's why God gives us so much grace, giving us a little more time to educate ourselves and turn to the right path, which is the Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus said to him: I am the way and the truth and the life; no one will come to the Father through me."
John 14:6
And because we have a way, God gives us a little more time to repent, because he does not like death and does not want anyone to perish, and he warns us about this:
"The Lord is not late with His promise, as some think He is late, but He is patient with us, because He will not let anyone perish, but all come to repentance."
2 Peter 3:9
And if someone persistently refuses mercy and grace, then God will be his righteous judge
"Do not do this, nor lose the righteous with the unrighteous, that it may be to the righteous as well as to the unrighteous; don't; will not the judge of the whole earth judge justice?"
Gen.18:25
"When man sins against man, the judge will judge him; but when someone sins against the Lord, who will pray for him?"
1 Sam.2:25
"God is a righteous judge, and God is ready for wrath every day."
Psalm 7:11
,,And people will say: Truly there is fruit for the righteous! Indeed, God is the judge on earth!"
Psalm 58:11
"Because the Lord is our judge, the Lord is the one who sets the laws for us, the Lord is our king, He will save us."
Isaiah 33:22
,, Further, therefore, a crown of justice has been prepared for me, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me on that day; but not only to me, but to all who are looking forward to His coming."
2 Tim. 4:8
"There is one legislator and judge, who can save and execute; and who are you to judge another?"
James 4:12

1. God is perfect

Based on all the characteristics of God studied so far, we can only conclude that God is absolutely perfect, and this is confirmed by the verses from the Gospel. Also, everyone should strive towards the goal that the perfect God recommended to us.
"Be therefore perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect"
Matthew 5:48

Hello Charlotte and friends, I have gathered you here today to recount a tale of drama. I am here to spill tea that is not mine to spill but it deserves to be spilled and I hope you all enjoy the twists.
Firstly, disclaimer that it has been well over a year since all this went down so my memory may not be the best. I am recounting to the best of my ability. Secondly, if you know the guild of which I speak... hi ! Sorry not sorry for spilling the tea. I don't know if all of this was ever disclosed to the guild members, since I haven't been in the guild for over a year; and I want to say that, for the most part, the guild is great. No hate here.
Let's start with a place. Elder Scrolls Online. I'm a gamer and had been playing ESO on and off for several years, but wanted to buckle down and really get into playing it so I decided to join a guild in the hopes it would help me find my focus and keep my playing. For the unacquainted, ESO is a multiplayer roleplay game in which you can join guilds of players, approximately 500 per guild. The guild I joined had 3 branches at the time, so about 1500 members, with a central guild leader and a team of "officers", which were essentially mods that helped the day-to-day running of the guild and its Discord server. Shortly after I joined the guild they announced that they were looking for new officers to join the team, and despite being inexperienced and anxious I decided to apply, thinking the worst they could say is no. Unexpectedly, I was selected! There were about... maybe 20 ? Prospective officers-in-training.
Before we continue let me breakdown the officer hierarchy. At the top were Raspberries (changing the name, obviously), this was the guild mistress (leader) and her second-in-commands, of which there were five or six. Next were the Blackberries, which were the senior officers. After them, the Salmonberries, which were the ordinary rank and file of the officers. Lastly, there were the Blueberries, which was what I was, just an officer-in-training. In total I think there were... 30-40 officers? Us new Blueberries included.
The Discord server had a secret section from which the officers operated. We were welcomed into it after being ranked up, given the rundown of our expectations and when training would begin. The officer in charge of our training was awesome, very kind, however the guild leader was revealed to be kind of a manipulative asshole. Mistakes, by both new and seasoned officers, were called out publicly by the leader in the officer area of the server. This happened frequently over the course of the several months I was in-training. When we were deemed not to be operating to the guild leader's (let's call them Germ) high standards we were ordered to rank our fellow officers by how we felt they pulled their weight. If we didn't do this in a timely manner we were criticized and called out, and once everyone had submitted their rankings (public to the rest of the officers) Germ would call out those that ranked lowest, who often ended up demoted to regular member status or removed from the guild entirely for their failings. Senior officers (the Blackberries) who spoke out against the tyrannical rulings and expectations of Germ were equally at risk of this, being demoted to Salmonberries until they could prove themselves again. Then, after berating and belittling the officers, Germ would go on long-winded lectures about her standards for the guild, how she just wanted us to be our best and succeed, how she only pushed us to create the best environment for effective leadership. Sometimes she would even ask us how we felt she was as a leader, if she was meeting our expectations as a leader... and anything but a glowing or sympathetic response would result in her blowing up on the officer who criticized her. Then, within a few days ? All of those messages would simply disappear from the officer channels.
In short, we officers were held to impossible standards and criticized for not meeting them amongst our fellow officers. However, to the general membership? Germ was a great and kind and generous leader. But that's not where our story ends. Something quickly to note, every week we have a meeting in an officer voice chat, which Germ would always oversee, however while we were expected to have a mic and be able to speak Germ never spoke through voice chat. Even when she attended guild events in voice chat she was silent. Tuck that away for later, it's important. ;)
Now, lets introduce another key player in this story. Jess was Germs golden child, a Raspberry officer that she doted on endlessly and could never do wrong. We lowly Blueberries and Salmonberries just assumed she was a favorite of the guild leader and kind of hated her for it; she never interacted with anyone much, so we just assumed she thought she was better than us due to the favoritism.
In time I was promoted from Blueberry to Salmonberry, then Salmonberry to Blackberry. In that time we saw the removal and leaving of many officers, whether due to pressure, real life responsibilities, or Germs officer rankings. With the rank of Blackberry I was provided access to the Dark Room, which was essentially a channel for Blackberries and Raspberries to discuss higher profile stuff without the input of Salmonberries.
Now, this is where my timeline gets a little messy, so I apologize. At some point Germ stepped away from leadership, naming Jess as the new guild leader, despite remaining within leadership. There was a rocky transition, with Germ frequently stepping in to comment on things in the Dark Room. Then, came the day I was asked to speak with Jess and another Raspberry privately. At the time I had been told I would be responsible for a weekly member spotlight, so I was expecting this to be the training / rundown of that. Oh how wrong I was. Instead, I sat in voice chat with Jess and the other officer for over two hours as Jess recounted to me the recent happenings of the Raspberries and Germ. Until now (as far as I know) this information has only been shared with the officer team, so if you think you know the guild of which I speak... I'm sorry.
Germ was a creep, lets just say that. Again, chronology of this might be a bit off, its been awhile since I heard this and I no longer have access to the proof that was provided. Essentially, Germ had been creeping on Jess since she joined the officers. This is the part I'm not at liberty to share, because I respect Jess's privacy, but lets just say Germ was a real creep and basically terrorized her. After revealing all this to some of the other Raspberries they helped Jess in an effort to remove Germ from the guild and end their abusive leadership. What came next was a series of deals that basically summed up to Germ would surrender leadership to Jess but maintain access to the officers and guild (this was when Germ stepped away), so long as Jess never blocked them and continue to talk to Germ. Now, though, Jess was doing the rounds to the Blackberry officers in an effort to close ranks in a final push to negotiate the removal of Germ from the guild for good. This is where it gets wild.
At some point, after Germ had dropped off the radar for awhile, Jess was contacted by someone claiming to be Germs friend. The friend said that Germ was sick / in a coma and had directed this friend, lets call them David, to check in with the guild and ensure everything was okay. David, of course, knew a lot about the guild and Jess specifically, including specific things about her and conversations she had had with Germ. Jess, of course, was suspicious of this, and after some sleuthing with the help of the other Raspberries... discovered that Germ was not, in fact, in a coma, and that David was very likely Germ. Meaning, Germ was a grown ass man, and had been lying to everyone and the guild.
After this the Dark Room was preparing for war, essentially. They were gonna wrest the guild from Germ / David no matter what it took. We all had our part to play, it was a very tense time. Thankfully, this all was resolved fairly peacefully. Some stuff happened, I just don't recall specifics. In time, Germ was removed from the guild and server. At some point the Salmonberries and Blueberries had been clued in, and we celebrated their removal, vowing to start a new chapter for the guild. As a note, none of this was ever shared with the general membership of the guild throughout the whole process, and in the aftermath we were encouraged to lie or direct any questions about Germ to the Raspberries.
Now, I wish that was the end of the story. There is more.
I was made a training officer, and in an effort to remove the gap between Salmonberries and the rest of the team myself and the other training officer essentially became HR, hearing their complaints and issues and ensuring their concerns were addressed and questions were answered. More than that, I prided myself on being the "deep diver", meaning whenever we needed information on a member for meditation or punishment I was the one that looked through the server as well as our guild site to create a timeline and gather information, which I then reported to the Dark Room. I genuinely loved what I was doing, and I loved helping our new officers. I was always quick to defend them in the Dark Room, and had a good relationship with them whereas most of the other officers did not. I also frequently played devils advocate, and gave voice to the perspectives I felt deserved representation. I wanted honesty, and I performed all my duties without bias; I prided myself on that. This was, however, something of a pain for the Raspberries I guess.
Some time after the end of the Germ issues I was called aside by Jess and another Raspberry, and basically dressed down. I don't remember much of the interaction because I was honestly in shock; I had never been spoken to about the issues they presented, this was the first time I heard of them. I felt betrayed, I was upset. I cared too much, apparently, and made people uncomfortable. That's what I remember of it. And I was told to step down, or be removed. So I stepped down. In the aftermath I noticed another officer, who had also been something of a free speaker amongst the officers, was removed at the same time I was.
Since I had dedicated myself to the guild for over a year at that point I suffered. I tried to remain involved but I also distanced myself. When I returned to the Raspberry that had spoken to my alongside Jess in an effort for answers, as I genuinely wanted to know what I had done wrong so I could work on myself (this was suggested by my therapist, since I beat myself up a lot afterwards), I was told she didn't know and couldn't tell me. This was the same officer who had dressed me down, and she could not tell me what the issues she had raised against me were. I smelled bullsh*t, and distanced myself even more. However, one day some time later I ventured back to the server to see what was going on... and noticed that an officer I had trained right before I had been demoted was no longer in the guild. I reached out to her, asked if she was okay, and she said that after some drama had come out she hadn't been comfortable staying. I asked her what the drama had been about, and she clued me in to a group of officers, Salmonberries and Blackberries, who had stepped down and left the guild awhile after I had been forced to resign.
The simple version is, the Raspberries elected to ban a couple regular members who were frequently discussed in the Dark Room. They were a nuisance to many Blackberries, but they had never done anything wrong or worthy of removal, as found in the many reports I had prepared on them. Yet, they were removed on the down low, but when some of the Salmonberries that were familiar with them asked about it Jess said it was a mistake. This caused a rift, and disgruntled by the lack of answers a majority of the Salmonberries stepped down or left the guild entirely, as well as a few Blackberries who felt uncomfortable about how the incident was handled by Jess and the Raspberries. This also caused an exodus of regular guild members who were close with the two members that been banned, as well as those close to the officers.
It was at this point, once again surrounded by my peers, that I finally felt safe to discuss my own removal from the guild. I honestly felt partially responsible, and after looking at the evidence that we had we decided as a group that it seemed the Dark Room had an agenda, wanting to make changes, and they removed the officers that they knew would speak out against those changes. Those changes were what caused the drama with the exodus of officers and members. For awhile we considered putting the leadership on blast, but after awhile we decided it wasn't worth it and moved on. The leadership apparently found out about our gathering, though, and warned the guild against "disgruntled ex-members and officers". It was kind of funny, honestly.
Oh, and at the time I met with this group I was still a member of the guild, and when I approached some of the Raspberries about what had happened to get answers... I was shadowbanned from the guild without a word.
That pretty much concludes the Shadow Saga. No resolution, I have no idea what has happened in the 1+ year since I was removed. But I thought I would share the cliffnotes. Feel free to ask questions, I will do my best to answer. And, if any of you know of the guild or are still a member / officer... hi ! Wishing you all the best, honestly. I loved the guild, it was a great place, and generally I hold no ill will towards the officers.
Also, an additional note I forgot to add: before I had joined the guild there had apparently been a "purge", in which some officers staged an insurrection of sorts against Germ and they ended up purging the officer team to "restart" the guild. So, as much as the Raspberries tried to lead the guild out of Germs shadow... they failed, and history repeats itself. I genuinely hope they have since been able to find a balance.
Anyway, hope you enjoyed the tea. I know this isn't the usual kind of drama / tea you have in your videos Charlotte, but I hope you enjoy this cup even if it isn't featured. <3

….and realizing their life is so unfulfilling. I’m gardening tonight with some 80’s music playing. I’m content. I don’t have to be performative every minute of every day and that is peace in itself. I don’t take helicopter rides around my city because I’m a peon, but I do value my opportunities and exposure. I would have known about a nearby blackberry you pick.
Their life is so pathetically boring.

For the first time in the Bible, God tells us that he is eternal during the conversation with Moses when he appeared to him in the bush that burns and does not burn.
So Moses, before God brought the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt through him, was a shepherd with his father-in-law Jotor. So one day, while guarding the flock, he came to Mount Horeb and there the Lord appeared to him.
"And Moses fed the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and led the flock across the desert, and came to God's mountain Horeb. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from a blackberry tree. And he looked, and that blackberry is burning with fire, but not burning."
Exod.3:1-2
Moses learned about God's intentions from his conversation with God, and then Moses asks God what he should say to the Israeli brothers when he goes to them, what is the name of the God who sends him
,, And Moses said to God: Behold, when I go to the children of Israel, and say to them: The God of your fathers has sent me to you, if they say to me: What is His name? What will I tell them?"
Exod. 3:13
And then the Lord God answers Moses and tells him the following:
,, And the Lord said to Moses: I am the One who is. And he said: This is how you will say to the children of Israel: He who is, He sent me to you."
2 Moi. 3:14
And the modern Serbian translation reads:
"I am who I am"
And here we see that God uses an expression that tells us that God is eternal because "I am the One who is" or "I am the One who Is. "eternal present time". God translates as "I am the One who was "until now, I am the one who is now" and "I am the one who will be" in the future because the word "is" can be the past, the present and the future, therefore in "eternal time" what else could we say? God is eternal.
Now let's see a few more examples where the Lord says that he is eternal.
In John we have a conversation between Jesus and a Samaritan woman where the woman says that they are waiting for the messiah:
,, The woman said to him: I know that the Messiah will come who is called Christ, when he comes he will tell us everything.
John 4:25
and Jesus says to her:
,, Jesus said to her: I am the one speaking to you."
John 4:26
In the first chapter we have a record of how Jesus came to his disciples by walking on the sea and when they saw him they were afraid, but Jesus calmed them down with the words:
"And He said to them: I am; don't be afraid"
John 6:20
We could retell this event like this, Jesus tells them do not be afraid, "I am" from eternity, "I am" the creator, I have the power to walk on the sea because the sea and the waves listen to me.
Also in John we have a conversation between the Jews and Jesus where they compare him to Abraham and say that he is not greater than her father Abraham and challenge him with a question in the sense that he exalts himself
Then the Jews said to Him: Now we see that the devil is in you: Abraham died and the prophets, and you say: Whoever keeps my word will not taste death forever. Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? And the prophets were confused: who are you building yourself?"
John 8:52-53
And Jesus answers them that He is not exalted Himself, but His Father exalts Him, whom they say is their God, but only in words, because we see that Jesus says that in fact they do not know Him
Jesus answered: If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing: it is my Father who glorifies me, whom you say is your God. And you do not know Him, but I know Him; and if I say that I do not know Him, I will be a liar like you. But I know Him, and I keep His word."
John 8:54-55
and then he answers them on the subject of Abraham and finally tells them who he is.
,, Abraham, your father, was laboring to see my day; and they saw, and he rejoiced. Then the Jews said to Him: You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham? And Jesus said to them: Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am before Abraham was born."
John 8:56-58
Here Jesus tells them, in fact, "I am the one who is" or "I am the one who was", but of course they did not believe that, but took stones to throw at Him because they knew what "I am" means. Something like that. could only say God and that is the reason why they took stones to stone him, because they believed that he was blaspheming God and for that the punishment was prescribed - stoning.
"And tell the children of Israel: Whoever blasphemes his God will bear his sin. Whoever blasphemes the name of the Lord shall be put to death, all the people shall stone him to death; both the foreigner and the native who blaspheme the name of the Lord shall be put to death."
Levit. 24:15-16
From this we can only conclude that the Lord Jesus is the eternal God.
Now let's go through the Bible and see the verses that confirm what we have said so far.
"And Abraham planted an apple tree in Beersheba, and there he invoked the name of the Lord God Eternal."
Gen.21:33
And again God said to Moses: Say this to the children of Israel: The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you; it is my name forever, and it is my memorial from generation to generation."
Exod.. 3:15
"Shelter is the eternal God and under the eternal arm;..."
Deut.. 33:27
,, But the Lord always lives; he prepared his throne for judgment"
Psalm 9:7
"The Lord sat over the flood, and the Lord will sit as king always"
Psalm 29:10
"Before the heavens were born and the earth was created and inhabited, and from everlasting to everlasting, You are God."
Psalm 90:2
"Don't you know? Haven't you heard that God the eternal Lord, who created the ends of the earth, does not stop or get tired? There is no measure to His understanding"
Isa. 40:28
"And the Lord is the true God, the living God and the eternal king, from His heart the earth shakes, and the nations cannot bear His anger."
Jerem. 10:10
"But after that time, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes to heaven, and my mind returned to me, and I blessed the Most High, and praised and glorified Him who lives forever, whose dominion is eternal and whose kingdom is from generation to generation."
Daniel 4:34
"And to the Eternal King, the Incorruptible, the invisible, the only all-wise God, honor and glory for ever and ever." Amen."
1 Tim.1:17
"And each of the four animals had six wings around, and inside full of eyes, and they had no peace day and night, saying: Holy, holy, holy Lord God Almighty, Who was, and who is, and who is to come. And when the animals gave glory and honor and praise to Him who sat on the throne, who lives forever and ever, Twenty-four elders fell before Him who sat on the throne, and bowed down to Him who lives forever and ever, and placed their crowns before the throne, saying:
Rev. 4:8-10
God is eternal, let's trust God.

It had been three days since she delivered her daughter, and Myrcella’s color had just come back to her face. Tilly and Lady Baela had been at her side with a bevy of women, all fussing over her. Myrcella had queried whether all of them were on salary, and her maid had simply hushed and coaxed her back into sleep.
She could finally sleep well. She would thank the Mother for that, if not for giving her a son.
The nameless daughter of Tarth was not in the room, thank the Seven for that. She was young and healthy, and would have been the perfect rowdy son that Cameron dreamt of if only she was the other gender. She was safe with the wetnurse and Tilly’s watchful gaze at that very moment, far enough away that Myrcella could sleep in uninterrupted peace for the first time in almost six moons.
Myrcy lay in the indeterminate spot between sleep and alertness when young Wallace Blackberry, her husband’s page, opened the door to her room with a very grave look upon his face. Myrcella blinked owlishly, sitting up in bed as she pulled her blankets higher.
“Wallace,” she said gently but with a seriousness behind it, “you should always knock and wait before entering a lady’s chamber.”
“My apologies, my lady,” he returned, bowing awkwardly as he fidgeted with what he was holding in his hands. The young lad looked like he wanted to be anywhere but standing before her. And were his eyes rimmed red? “But the maesters just received a bird from the south with a letter for you.”
Myrcella’s heart began to pick up its beating until it was running at a rabbit's pace.
Wallace came forth and put the letter in her hands. The wax seal had already been broken- either by him or by one of the maesters, it didn’t much matter at this point. What alarmed Myrcy the most was that Wallace was sniffling openly in front of her, which he always took such great lengths to hide.
Her hands shook as she fumbled with the wound piece of paper, opening it up to see not her husband’s scrawl but the familiar handwriting of Jasper Toyne. Her indigo eyes flickered over the words, reading one after the other.
Myrcella’s stomach felt like it was hollowing itself out. Her tongue felt numb. Her hands and feet were cold.
“He’s dead,” said Wallace, as if she could not read, and then hid his sniffle in the sleeve of his tunic.
And so he was. Myrcella read again and again, as if the words might change. Jasper had killed her husband. Her friend had killed Cameron.
It felt like she had her morning sickness all over again. She retched once, then twice. Septa Danelle rushed to fetch a chamber pot for her but Myrcella eventually fought back the bile in her throat and simply sat there breathing shallowly.
Wallace was crying now, and doing a very poor job at hiding it. That was fine, Myrcella supposed. It was only right that someone cried at his death, because despite her dismay her waterline had remained free of all woes.
Cameron was dead, and he wasn’t coming back.
Jasper had killed him.
Didn’t that make this her own fault? If she hadn’t told Jasper, then maybe there wouldn’t have been a duel. Though he swore up and down in the letter that the duel had been over his honor, she knew the truth.
If she hadn’t told Jasper about the bastard, then Cameron would still be alive.
Didn’t that mean she was responsible, in some way?
Myrcella let out a faint, nervous laugh- still staring down at the parchment. Wallace Blackberry looked up at her as though she had grown a second head upon her shoulders. The Lady of Tarth- or was she the Dowager Lady, now? The Regent? Did she even have a title? Cameron had been Lord of Tarth. Cameron had been the Evenstar. Cameron had been the Master of Coin.
All of her power had been through him. And with a slip of Jasper Toyne’s fingers, all her power had gone.
Back to being simply Myrcella, she supposed.
“Leave me, please,” said simply Myrcella, who now feared she might be going mad. “I- I need some time alone.”
They’d come to her rooms soon, she was sure. Rhaegar, or Luthor Peake, or one of Baelor’s men, or someone, and they’d find the ledgers and they’d take them.
They’d take them away, and she’d never see her work finished.
Her laughter picked up, pitchy and hysterical, and before she knew it she was crying.
She thought herself a vicious, hateful woman to cry over her accounting books and not her husband. They’d find someone to replace her- no, to replace Cameron- in a fortnight and they’d send her back to Tarth or back to Storm’s End. It didn’t matter which one, really. She had loathed King’s Landing right up until this very moment- because at least in the Red Keep she had some purpose outside of simply being pretty and pushing out children.
At least in the Red Keep she could serve the realm.
She was crying like she was six again and Lyndon had broken her favorite doll.
Her body ached, but she was still strong enough to stand. She paced between the door to the nursery and her writing table- wracked with indecision. She was in no state to see Cassandra and the baby, but she was equally in no state to take up a pen and quill. Yet she had to do something, or she’d only spiral further.
Myrcella could see it before her like a vision from the Stranger.
What could she say to Jasper that would not damn her further? She could hardly congratulate him. But nor could she deny him, for if she had only kept her woes to herself as a wife should then Cameron would still be alive. And if she forgived her husband’s killer, then what would people think of her? That she had willingly contrived it?
She had imagined Cameron dying, but now that he was gone she felt terrifyingly little.
Myrcella sat back down on her bed and stared at the floor. She was running out of options. Ones that didn’t bring her closer to self destructing, at least.
With nothing else to do, Myrcy called for tea.