Unfinished Stories Chapter One

Chapter One

The Duke’s Company

Ryen munched on her bread and peered out across the midday crowd in the town square. She chewed rapidly and ducked whenever she saw someone she recognized. Why did it matter? She had tripped and fallen in front of all the people at the Academy, but it had been three days ago. Of course, when you were Ryen, people remembered embarrassing moments like that. She hunched down a little further and finished her bread, moving onto her soup. She slurped loudly, just because she was annoyed with herself.

That was the moment Carlisel took to approach. Ryen didn’t even bother to try to look any less ridiculous because it was a losing battle and she knew when to surrender.

“Why Ry! How’s your face? Bruised, like your dignity?”

Such were the makings of repartee in the small village of Dalmon.

“Gee, Carly, can’t you go feel somewhere else and feel superior? I’m sure there are some three-legged dogs you could kick after they’re run over by horses.”

“You think you’re hilarious, don’t you, Ry?”

“No more than you seem to get a kick out of trying to sound clever with boring insults.” Ryen slurped loudly and pointedly.

Carlisel grimaced. “Ugh. Peasant.”

“Ugh. Blacksmith’s daughter.” When Carlisel sent her a disgusted look, she shrugged. “Let’s not forget that we come from the same stock. Poor. You just wear it with a little more denial.” Ryen congratulated herself on not stuttering and delivering her lines well. It didn’t exactly reduce Carly to tears, which would have been preferable, but it reduced the other girl to speechlessness for a moment. But only for a moment.

“Well, not for long. I’m going to be a soldier’s wife.” She tossed her hair and Ryen had to roll her eyes.

“What a glamorous life, Carly. Congratulations! Who’s the lucky guy?” The only soldiers living there were the guards up at the fort.

“Oh. It’s just a matter of picking out who gets to have me.”

“From the many eligible bachelors among the city watch?” Ryen asked in amusement. Carly’s face lit up. This, apparently, was why she had come to torture her.

“Oh. You haven’t heard? The Duke of Culter’s company is going to be using the barracks up at the fort for the next six months. I’m surprised you didn’t know, considering your mum’s always needing the extra money,” Carly delivered with a smirk.

Ryen stopped eating and very gently placed her spoon down on the scarred table. She carefully nudged it into place.

“I guess you mean unlike your mother, who warms numerous beds for free?”

“That’s a tired joke, Ry,” she snapped, her fist clenched in her skirt.

“I could say the same of yours,” Ryen answered quietly. They stared at each other for a few moments. “I’ll tell my mom of the new business opportunities.” She flashed a mirthless smile.

“She’ll probably be able to meet up with mine there.”

For a few seconds, neither said anything.

“I hope you’ll be at the officer’s ball tonight,” Carly finally said. “I’d like to be seen favorably when compared to you while I’m looking for my prospects.” Her gaze was cold as she moved off. Ryen didn’t shift in her seat. She eventually went back to her soup, letting out a long, slightly shaky breath. She wondered about the new soldiers, but then decided that she didn’t care. And then decided that perhaps she did.

Ryen was just like the other girls when it came to ogling the new soldiers who stayed up at the fort every few seasons. She just did it from afar and acted on nothing. Because if she did act on it, people would stare at her like she had no justifiable reason to try.

She watched as the flow of the crowd shifted and suddenly everyone was heading in the same general direction. She sighed, knowing she’d have to get up and find out what the ruckus was about, and cursing her innate curiosity that always led to problems. Ryen calmly tucked her spoon in the bowl and set it on the counter before tossing a coin beside it and heading off.

She consciously slowed her walk to a saunter and edged through the crowd, which had always been a talent of hers. Before long, she was near the front edge of the people, and she peered around the gigantic block of muscle in front of her to see what was going on.

Ryen first saw the colors of the flag that waved high above the soldiers’ heads. Gold and maroon. She frowned, and tried to remember what the Duke of Culter’s colors were. Shrugging, she decided that they had to be maroon and gold, because no other company would then be marching confidently through the town on their way up to the fort.

She craned her neck and was eventually able to see into the ranks. The armor was dented, rusted in places, and, altogether, wholly unimpressive. But the townspeople still made noises of wonderment, and the soldiers’ faces were filled with the arrogance of well-financed military companies. It was all attitude, she thought with a wry twist to her lips. The file leader passing with the big feather in his helmet caught her eye before the file moved past. Narrowing her eyes at the wobbling plume, she shook her head. She nudged gently past the muscle and stood beside him, shoulder to elbow for a better view.

The ranks moved past for a good hour before they were all safely encompassed by the crowd around the bend. Finally, the bells up at the fort began to toll, and the citizens dispersed. Ryen turned around fully and began the short trek back to her lodgings.

“I’m back,” she called. Her sister poked her head out of the main room and grimaced.

“You’re covered in dirt. Where have you been? I need help with the chickens. Three have flown the coup.” And with that she disappeared. Ryen rolled her eyes and followed Saera out into the pack. Three white hens were, indeed, fluttering around loose in the back yard. With much pecking and angry recriminations from the affronted birds, Ryen and her sister rounded them up and tossed them back with the others.

With a groan, Ryen collapsed on the back stoop. Saera seated herself calmly beside her younger sister and plucked a piece of straw from her knotted hair.

“I assume you stopped with the rest to gawk at the ‘batons’,” Saera said, ripping off a piece of roll and stuffing it in her mouth. She chewed as she sent a contemplating look out over the backyard. “I’m thinking of adding another few bushes over there on the edge.” She gestured at the back corner. “What do you think?”

“I don’t. I have no opinion on the matter whatsoever. That’s always been yours’ and mom’s thing. And yes. I did stop to gawk.” She snatched the roll from her sister. Even after her lunch, she was starving. Her one virtue was that she could eat without a fluctuating weight. She would always be slightly heavier than anyone else thought she was, so she would take advantage of that blindness. She saw the fat that no one else did, but she rarely took a look at her own body.

“Oh, right. I forgot. You prefer books to sunlight.” Saera stole her roll back and finished it off in one bite. She ran a hand over her hair and deftly pulled it back to capture it with a blue clip.

“Yeah.” She squinted up at the sun and sent a quick sideways glance at her sister. “I, uh, ran into Carlisel out when I was eating.” She cleared her throat and propped her elbows up on her knees.

Saera turned her full attention to her younger sister. “You didn’t let her get to you, did you?”

“Why should I let her get to me? I’m well aware of what mom does. That’s the reason I moved out and into here in the first place,” Ryen said with a self-conscious roll of her shoulders. Her sister kept her eyes on her for a second longer, then mimicked her action and wiped a few crumbs from her face.

“Good.” She brushed her hands and stood up, holding out a hand and hefting Ryen up to her feet. “I need to get started on the new bed on the side. Lady Entra was passing out seeds at the market and I need some purple with all that yellow.”

“What a match of color, Saera. The colors of the Tylenan dynasty. Surely no one could tell you were a loyalist already?” Ryen demanded sarcastically. Saera sniffed and then laughed.

“I just like the colors, sis.” She chuckled again and disappeared around the side of the house. Ryen stared after her for a minute or two before turning and going back inside, letting the back door slam shut.

0-0-0-0-0-0

She heard the loud music late in the evening, as the glow from the lanterns began to replace the dying sunlight. The fiddler’s notes soared high above even the flautists, and she followed them with a blissful smile. Ryen’s passion, besides books, was music. It didn’t matter that she could hardly play the notes for “Forest Brook Nymphs”. She enjoyed listening to it.

At the sound of laughter, the smile left her face. The evidence of people that accompanied the happy music was very displeasing to a hermit who was trying to curl up in her chilly room and concentrate on her book. Ryen resolutely turned a page and followed the words with her eyes. It took her five minutes to realize she had been reading the same sentence the entire time.

She snapped the book shut in vexation. Downstairs she heard the clattering of her sister washing the bowls from diner in the basin. She stood and propped her hands on the windowsill, peering out towards the bright lights at the fort.

No doubt Carlisel would be circulating about now, whirling from one soldier to the other in a manner that Ryen did NOT envy in any way. No, Ryen didn’t care to be like Carly in any sense. Except maybe in regards to being so at ease in such surroundings.

She settled on the window seat and kept a vigilant watch on the walls of the fort, watching the Watch pace from torch to torch, walking with a steady beat that almost soothed. She let out a melancholy sigh and went downstairs. She wanted her sister to comfort her.

When Saera saw her, her face became animated. “Oh, good. I thought you have gone to bed. Mum sent a message down from the fort. She needs one of us to replace a server who’s fallen ill. Maya was manning the tables of food but she ended up vomiting all over the fruit. I was at my wits end trying to clean everything up and hustle up there, but you can do it.”

Ryen held up both hands hastily in protest. “No. No way, Saera. I can’t go up there. You know how I am at those things. And you KNOW who all’s going to be there.”

“You said you didn’t care about Carliesel.” She gave her sister a knowing glance as she quickly dried off a bowl.

“It’s not just her. It’s all of them. They’ll ALL be there, and not all of them have parents I can insult in retaliation.”

“Ryen,” Saera chided, shaking her head. “You get back at her THAT way? Where’s your pride?”

“I have none, that’s the point,” she answered petulantly and with an air of exasperation. “I ENJOY stooping to their level, than you very much.”

“You’re going, Ry. Mum needs the money, and you need the money.”

“She could always sleep with the lieutenant if she’s so hard up,” Ryen muttered sourly. Her sister glared at her and Ryen finally threw her hands up in capitulation.

“All right, all right. I’ll sacrifice whatever pride I have left, dress up in ruffly fripperies, and march up there because a girl vomited on some fruit.” She continued to mutter as she stomped back upstairs. “Honestly, though, wash ‘em off and there’s not much difference. They’d taste the same, why they give her a day off because she has a bit of upset…”

She yanked the dress on over her head and smoothed out a few of the many, many wrinkles that crisscrossed the skirt. “Tie me,” she bellowed down the stairs.

Before long she was making her slow way up to the fort, angrily tossing her damp hair from her face as it stubbornly stuck to her face. The drizzle had begun not long after she’d given in. The gods hated her. It was the only explanation. She came to the west side door and banged heavily on it. Ryen was thankful that her mother didn’t answer it. She loved the woman, but she always felt so awkward around her. She’d been that way ever since she’d inadvertently discovered how her mother that extra money on the side. The embarrassing way. The mentally-scarring way.

“Oh, good. Dear Ryen, your mum’s on a rampage. You’ve got to git right to the table, else who KNOWS what she’ll go off on next.” The motherly, plump Dona Carlton ushered her inside. The music was muted by the thick wall between the courtyard and the outer halls, and Ryen tried to peer out of the open doors she passed to no avail. She saw nothing of the festivities until she was shoved out of the tiny door on the very edge, far beyond the torchlight.

She saw her mother a little further in, hopping from foot to foot desperately. Therese saw her and her face lit up manically.

“You are here! Thank the gods, I thought I’d have to send Jimmy in, and you know how he gets around people. He’d have been lifting the ladies’ skirts and cutting into dances and upsetting the lot of them with his antics. You’ve got all these wrinkles, though, sweety. I thought I told you to hang it on the hook when you took your bath to straighten it out. Nevermind, hop to it.”

Ryen didn’t get in a word edgewise, and she soon found herself behind the table piled high with strawberries, cherries, melons, and grapefruit. She smiled nervously at the people who were just moving off when they looked at her curiously. With a shaky wave, she shifted behind the stack of apples, hoping to become invisible.

“Why, Ryen!”

Ryen rolled her eyes to the heavens and sent out a curse of all gods before she pasted on a big smile and face Carlisel.

“I see you took my invite to heart.”

“Not so much,” Ryen muttered. She pushed a plate in Carly’s face. “Fruit?”

The soldier with his arm around Carlisel’s looked at the two of them askance. “You are…friends, are you?” His accent was harsh and his grip on the language was obviously abominable.

“No. Not so much,” Ryen repeated. She jerked her head in his direction as she met Carlisel’s gaze. “Your future husband?”

Carlisel hissed and lifted her eyebrows meaningfully. “Why, whatever do you mean, Ry? We’ve been dancing. We just need a little snacky before we can get back to it. Isn’t that right, Zejhouv?”

Ryen had a hard time covering her laugh of reaction. Carly glared, and the man looked decidedly confused. It was horrible being in a foreign country and not speaking the language, Ryen thought sympathetically. Not that she knew.

Carlisel moved off without another comment and Ryen let out a breath of relief.

“A shark, you might call her.” A voice intruded on her dire thoughts, and Ryen was momentarily disoriented.

“Sorry? A what?”

“A shark. You…fish, in the ocean. Large teeth.”

She looked at the stranger blankly and he sighed. “All right. You’re not near the coast, why would you know?” He had shiny blond hair and a bright smile, and she automatically despised him. It took her quite a bit longer to figure out why.

“My name is Ricard,” he said, holding out a hand. She took it almost distastefully.

“Ryen,” she replied. He raised a well-manicured eyebrow.

“An interesting name, to be sure.”

“Yes, it’s a boy’s name. Thank you for informing me,” she said rudely.

“I didn’t.” He filled a bowl with grapes and watched her as he popped one in his mouth. Her expression was blank. His uniform was spotless and crisp, but she didn’t bother with the useless gesture of ineffectually smoothing the material of her own clothes. She did, however, feel the familiar panic attack coming on, and the painful bouts of shyness returning. It happened whenever a stranger spoke directly to her. It was why she preferred her own company to that of anyone else.

Ryen retreated a little from the light, finding small comfort in the shadows falling from the wall. Ricard continued to watch her for a time before losing interest and going back out to mingle. She followed his progress across the courtyard until he was out of sight. She returned to her place behind the table.

The rest of the evening was without event. No one else noticed the girl handing out bowls of leftover fruit near the end of the celebration, and she enjoyed the relative invisibility that a servant’s metaphorical cloak gave her. Her skin crawled at the presence of so many men, but at the end of the night, she was safely ensconced in the outer halls and helping her mother toss the food.

“Thank you so much for helping, sweety. I’ve got to get going now, before…” She stopped herself and looked a little unsure. Ryen grimaced.

“I get it, mom. Before the captains are all abed.”

She felt her mom’s annoyed gaze on her as she left, but tried to ignore it. Ryen burst out of the side door in the west wall and sighed heavily. Finally free. She passed a solider slumped against the stone and pretended not to hear his whistle to gain her attention.

She passed her sister, didn’t answer her inquiries, and ripped off the dress. Throwing it in the corner, she fell into her bed and pulled the covers up to her chin. She was furious, for some reason. Her breathing was ragged, as if she had run far in cold weather. Eventually it quieted and her chest rose and fell evenly. She fell asleep.

Chapter Two

The Academy

Ryen was a little groggy as she awoke to face the new day. She rubbed her eyes hastily and sat up quickly, listening intently. She heard what she feared and groaned, throwing herself out of bed just as her sister shoved open the door. The merchants were already out in the streets.

“You’re late!” Saera shouted. Ryen growled and tossed her hands up as she dashed around her room.

“I KNOW, Saera. You’re supposed to wake me UP. Especially after last night.” She quickly tossed on some clothes that she was sure didn’t match under any code of fashion before scurrying down the stairs. She stuck a roll in her mouth and yanked on her pack, bursting through the front door just as the bells at the Academy let out a knell that sounded much like knells of doom.

“Gods, Saera,” she whined to herself and to the world in general as she ran down the main street and cut through the stalls, skirting the pastries and ignoring the greeting from Kulsa. She made it into the gates seconds before they snapped shut and just as the last note of the bells was dying away. The monitor simply shook her head in annoyance before jotting down the name under “Punctual” and gesturing that she go about her business.

Ryen calmed her breaths as she strode down the south hall. The room she entered was silent, a bad sign. Professor Alver frowned at her as she took her seat near the back before turning back to the board. With a final expulsion of breath, Ryen dropped her forehead to the table, fishing for her quill with one hand.

“The Wars of Chase,” he continued. “Westerners decided that they needed their own country in order to function as a society. Perhaps Sada Dulsanne could tell us why?”

She lifted her head and raised both eyebrows in alarm.

“I thought not. Take out your book, Sada.” Back to the board. “The Westerners had, over the years, developed a culture very much their own. Nothing in Chase society reflected anything of their separate development, and so they felt ignored, and very much a different nationality from the Eastern tribes.”

He droned on for the next three hours in this fashion. Soon Ryen wasn’t the only on with her forehead on her table. Professor Alver noticed none of them, however. His back was to the class almost the entire time. She forced herself to scrawl down the notes he was scribbling on the board. She could care less about the country of Chase. Tylena was the one in dire straits. Of course, the revolution hadn’t reached this remote outpost, but it was bound to eventually.

“Did you know they’re adding a defense class to the roster?” Kylie asked her excitedly as they escaped the stifling History classroom. Ryen snorted.

“Why? We already have physical training to keep us fit,” she demanded, rounding a corner a little closely and clipping her shoulder. She rubbed it with a scowl.

“Because the company is training some VERY raw recruits here that are still in need of schooling. So they figure they might as well use to facilities already available.”

“Freely, you mean.” Ryen was appalled.

“Well, of course. They’re fighting for our country, after all.” Kylie glanced at her curiously. Ryen growled.

“They’re likely never to see battle of any kind here,” she protested. “If I had known they’d get free schooling, I’d’ve joined up and saved my family the money. I mean, come ON. This is another one of those privileges of the rich and lazy.”

“They’re SOLDIERS, Ry,” Kylie whispered, scandalized.

“Not much of soldiers if they’re to take a defense class we have to also.”

Her friend was a little stiff, so Ryen gave up. She wouldn’t convince anyone of her beliefs. Why even try? “Never mind, Kylie. So, when do WE start? Do you know?”

Kylie nervously looked back down at the paper she’d been waving about. “In two days. It’ll be split up into four different times to accommodate all the new company men. I doubt we’ll be together.”

Ryen shrugged. “True. But we’ll get the same training, so it’ll still be something we can talk about. Like history.”

“Unlike all the other crap, where we take totally separate things. I mean, come ON. Who takes Politics and Dignitary?

“I do.”

“Why, I do believe you’re right!” Kylie said in mock amazement. “I mean who ELSE? Smart ass.”

“That I am. But only to you, my dear friend.”

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

Ryen made a stroke that was too long, and the stick snapped down on the surface of her table. Everyone, her included, jumped. She nervously met the uncanny eye of Professor Daldit. The wizened old woman nudged the glasses that teetered on the bridge of nose and tugged a little at her eye patch.

“Wrong,” she bellowed, moving on without saying anything else. Ryen took a deep breath and dipped the brush back into the ink. She very carefully drew the next line. There was a snap and communal jump on the other side of the room. “Wrong!”

With a sigh of relief, Ryen replaced the cap on her inkbottle and laid the brush flat on the pad above her parchment. Who would have thought Calligraphy and Illumination would turn out to be her most nerve-rattling classes? Perhaps it would have been a simple class with a different Professor, but Daldit was, quite simply, insane. And very meticulous. And insane.

“Satisfactory,” Daldit barked right by her ear. Ryen barely held back the yelp. The Professor had crept up behind her. She was shaking a little as Daldit moved off and one or two students chuckled a little in empathy. Okay, perhaps she wasn’t a leper to these students after all. Sure, she had started off rather badly, taking a hard dive on the cobblestones out front on her second day, but that had been mostly forgotten. Only Carlisel would continue to remind her, and Ryen constantly told herself that Carlisel didn’t matter.

After all, she thought with a sarcastic edge, Carly would be married to a solider pretty soon. And in six months, if the gods were actually on her side for once, Ryen would be able to wave Carlisel goodbye for good.

Class ended none too soon after that, and she almost flew down the halls to her next class. Alchemy was by far her least favorite, but ever since the hero Berard had emerged from the southern region, the King had been obsessed with the art. Berard had been a simply groom in a magician’s stable, and had someone gotten his hands on some of the magician’s alchemy books. “He wove himself a new destiny with that knowledge”, the king claimed. He went on to suggest that many of his other subjects could do the same. At any rate, it had become a universally practiced and accepted method of magic. Not like that of the so-called “Blood Wizards”.

Ryen had often wondered at the ambiguity of the name, but never voiced such thought. The wizards probably just dabbled in a little more of the “Strike magic” the civilians had come to fear. But no matter. She’d never shown any affinity for magic of any kind, so there was no point in thinking of the wizards, magicians and sorcerers who were sprinkled sparingly across the landscape of their world.

She pushed into the room and coughed a little as the smoke stung her eyes. Slightly alarmed, she peered through the gloom and tried to catch sight of her teacher. She couldn’t spot him, but she heard him muttering. Ryen squinted and shifted as other students began to enter and jostled her once or twice. Pretty soon they were all coughing a little, but somehow managed to feel their ways to their seats and sit gingerly in them. She heard the person next to her pulling back her chair and saw the darkness of her clothes in the currently dim light.

“You’d think that after years of blowing stuff up he’d give up on transforming lead into gold,” the girl muttered. Ryen shifted her gaze back to the table and didn’t say anything. She didn’t feel like making any gestures of companionability to someone she couldn’t see. Professor Calgyn finally made a yelp of pleased surprise and moved about the classroom, flinging his arms around and trying to shoo the smoke out of the windows and the door. His overly-large sleeves waved about ridiculously in the air and he finally slammed the door shut behind him and leaned against it with a huff. He shoved his glasses back up his nose and sniffed before hustling to the front of the class.

“Alright, I’m fairly certain that I’ve figured it out this time,” he said with a slight smile, shoving his sleeves up his arms with a preparatory air. Ryen watched him curiously and wondered what he was so excited about. She peeked at the girl next to her out of the corner of her eye and got an impression of tiny affability.

“He must have discovered how to turn lead into debt,” she suggested. The short girl giggled and opened her leather-bound book before dipping her quill in her inkpot and holding it poised over the parchment. With a sigh, Ryen followed suit. She looked up as the door swung open again and an unfamiliar person wandered in. Professor Calgyn glanced at him in perplexity, his hand poised over the misting implements in front of him.

“Um…you are lost?”

Ryen had to chuckle at how confused he was looking. No one came in late, and, more specifically, no one new. The man—well, boy—looked slightly nervous, but he squared his already square shoulders and went right to the front.

“I’m from the…I’m from the fort, and I was told to come here,” he said, stuttering only once. He tentatively held out a scroll and Professor Calgyn waved it away.

“I’m sure you were. Please, take a seat. Anywhere. Where were we?” he asked, his brow wrinkling.

“Um, you said that you were fairly certain you’d figured it out this time,” the tiny girl called out. She snickered softly when Calgyn blinked and continued as if he had not been interrupted. He was a typically scatter-brained scientific type. Of all the Professors in his field, he was perhaps the smartest, but he could not control the class if his life depended on it.

By the time they broke out of the re-smoked room and emerged into the blinding sunlight, Ryen and the tiny girl, Ana, were fast friends. Ryen had never before made a friend so easily, and it made her feel a little happier. The young man came out last, and she cocked her head.

“What’s your name?” she asked. He had been looking at his toes, and cautiously met her eyes.

“Jarje,” he said quietly, slipping his alchemy book under his arm.

“I am Ryen, this is Ana. You’re going back up to the fort, aren’t you?” she asked. She and Ana were curious enough to fall into step beside him as he nodded and moved to the gate. They passed by all of the people streaming in and shouldered their way into an eddy in the crowd. Ana picked up the slack in the conversation.

“So, where are you from?”

“Um. Out towards the Western Ranges. In those mountains, a small town called Indyn.”

“What made you decide to join the company?” Ryen asked, plucking a pastry from a tray and tossing a penny to the baker, who caught it and grinned at her. She turned back to Jarje.

“Uh, well, there wasn’t much for me in Indyn, and I was always stronger than everyone else, so it seemed…I was…I was always hurting people, and they said I need some discipline.” As if amazed and embarrassed that he had said so much, he glanced down at his hands. “I’ve got to get back to the fort. It was nice meeting you.”

And he was gone.

“Awe. Wow, he’s like a wounded puppy. We have to become friends with him,” Ana said, jumping up and down excitedly and anxiously.

“Okay, okay. I like him. I want to make him happy. I’m suddenly infused with goodwill, and I usually hate everyone.” Her face lit up. “Hey, you have to meet Kylie. We can go see her at the gate. Her last class lets out later than most. I hear the professor in there is insane, but I don’t have her until tomorrow.”

“Oh? What’s her name?”

“Professor Kaye.”

The look on Ana’s face was funny. “That’s my mom.”

Ryen gaped. “Oh, gods. I’m sorry. I just heard it from these two girls. Those girls are idiots at any rate, so they’d probably see anything involving work as the work of an unbalanced mind.”

Ana chuckled half-heartedly. “Yeah. You have a lot of those people here.”

“Sorry. What’s it like having one of the terrifying professors as a mother?” she asked, hoping that her jocular tone was in keeping with whatever was going through Ana’s head. The girl shrugged.

“She’s not like that at home.”

Author’s note: that’s where it ends. I don’t even know where I was going with this story. It wasn’t even titled.